GIFT   OF 


THE  LAST  PAGAN 


THE  LAST  PAGAN 


BY 


JAMES  WESTFALL  THOMPSON 


PRESIDENTIAL  ADDRESS  BEFORE 

THE    CHICAGO    LITERARY   CLUB 

FORTY-THIRD  YEAR 

OCTOBER    9ra,     1916 


But  slow  that  tide  of  common  thought 

Which  bathed  our  life  retired  ; 
Slow,  slow  the  old  world  wore  to  naught, 

And  pulse  by  pulse  expired. 

Matthew  Arnold,  Obermann  Once  More. 


CHICAGO  LITERARY  CLUB 

1917 


Copyright,  1917,  by  JAMES  WESTFALL  THOMPSON 


TO 
W.  H.  P. 


860775 


THE  LAST  PAGAN 

VERY  thoughtful  man,  when 
he  has  reached  the  "forties" 
of  life,  must  have  developed 
some  interest  in  philosophic 
thought  and  have  formed 
some  sort  of  philosophy  of 
his  own,  perhaps  intangible 
and  incommunicable  to  others, 
yet  sufficient  unto  himself.  Such  men  have 
lived  in  every  age,  and  will  continue  to  be 
unless  the  race  is  to  perish  of  moral  inanition. 
The  history  of  one  such  clear  and  brave 
thinker  of  the  Middle  Ages,  hitherto  not  mere 
ly  forgotten  but  utterly  unknown,  is  embraced 
between  the  covers  of  this  little  book.  It  is 
that  of  a  young  mediaeval  student,  nurtured  in 
the  academic  skepticism  prevailing  at  the  Uni 
versity  of  Paris  in  the  thirteenth  century,  who 
became  fascinated  with  the  study  of  ancient 
philosophy,  especially  Neo-Platonism  and 


Aristotelianism,  knowledge  of  which  the 
Middle  Ages  acquired  through  the  medium  of 
Arabic  and  Jewish  thought.  Finally,  capti 
vated  by  the  glamour  of  the  religion  of  Julian 
and  the  dead  gods,  he  secretly  became  a  pagan 
in  thought  and  feeling. 

;  ;"The  ghosts  of  words  and  dusty  dreams, 
Old  memories,  faiths  infirm  and  dead," 

tc  him  became  "  the  heritage  of  splendid, 
moving  things." 

How  came  this  forgotten  paladin  of  pagan 
ism  to  be  discovered?  From  my  boyhood  the 
imagery  and  vision  of  the  famous  hymn  "Jeru 
salem  the  Golden "  *  has  had  a  charm  for  me, 
though  I  am  far  from  accepting  its  theology. 
The  authorship  of  this  mediaeval  Latin  poem, 
in  the  original  entitled  De  contemptu  mundi, 
is  ascribed  to  one  Bernard  of  Cluny,  of  the 
twelfth  century.  But  who  was  Bernard  of 
Cluny?  Tradition  says  that  he  was  a  Breton. 
In  the  summer  of  1906  I  attacked  the  problem 
of  the  authorship  of  this  poem,  and,  as  the 
result  of  researches  which  need  not  be  entered 
into  here,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  Bernard, 
instead  of  having  been  a  Breton,  was  a  Pro- 
vengal,  a  son  of  William  V.,  seigneur  of  Mont- 

1  For  every  thing  pertaining  to  the  authorship  and 
history  of  this  famous  hymn  of  the  church  see  the 
late  Samuel  Macauley  Jackson's  The  source  of  "Jeru 
salem  the  Golden,"  together  with  a  prose  translation 
by  Mr.  Henry  Preble,  published  by  the  University  of 
Chicago  Press,  1910. 


pellier  in  southern  France.  This  "footnote  to 
history"  saw  the  light  in  the  Cambridge 
Journal  of  Theological  Studies  in  April,  1907. 
I  never  thought  of  reverting  to  the  subject 
again. 

In  the  spring  of  that  same  year  I  went  to 
France  for  study,  and  there  was  forwarded  to 
me  across  the  Atlantic  once  more  a  letter 
which  was  to  prove  to  be  the  open  door  to  one 
of  the  most  interesting  experiences  which  has 
ever  befallen  me.  It  was  a  letter  from  His 
Grace,  Francois  M.  A.  de  Cabrieres,  the  bishop 
of  Montpellier,  written  in  ecclesiastical  Latin, 
of  which  this  is  the  translation : 


BISHOPRIC  OF  MONTPELLIER 

MONTPELLIER,  HERAULT,  1907,  20  mai. 
Optime  Domine: 

It  was  with  great  astonishment  and  pleasure  that 
I  saw  your  article  recently  published  in  the  last  num 
ber  of  the  Journal  of  Theological  Studies. 

The  town,  popularly  called  Murles,  is  situated  in 
my  diocese;  but  I  had  never  heard  that  the  pious 
author  of  the  poem  concerning  celestial  glory  was 
born  in  it,  and  Neale  himself  locates  the  natal  place 
of  our  said  monk  in  the  town  of  Morlaix  in  Brittany, 
and  asserts  that  he  was  born  of  an  English  family. 

But  your  opinion  is  very  pleasing  to  me,  and  I  would 
like  to  know  what  has  been  published  about  the  life, 
the  writings  and  the  poem  itself  of  Bernard,  whether 
in  England,  or  in  Germany,  or  among  us. 

I  presume  this  much  upon  your  kindness,  and  ask 
that  you  will  do  me  the  favor  to  write  a  brief  sum 
mary,  in  which  I  may  learn  to  what  sources  I  should 
go,  what  books  also  to  read,  in  order  that  I  may  ac 
quire  knowledge  readily  in  regard  to  this  matter  per- 


taining  to  my  diocese,  so  distinguished  by  his  birth 
and  virtues. 

If  ever,  on  any  day,  in  travelling  through  France, 
you  wish  to  visit  Montpellier,  and  God  be  willing  to 
lengthen  my  days  till  that  time,  it  will  be  an  honor 
and  a  pleasure  to  me  to  be  your  guide  to  the  ancient 
town  of  Murles,  and  we  will  say  our  prayers  together 
not  far  from  the  ruins  of  that  old  castle  where,  per 
haps,  Bernard  was  born. 

Believe  me,  Domine  Optime,  your  humble  and  de 
voted  servant  in  Christ, 

FR.  M.  A.  DE  CABRIERES, 
Bishop  of  Montpellier.1 

1  Optime  domine : 

Maxima  admiratione  et  satisfactione  mihi  fuit 
quod,  in  ultimo  fascicule  Diarii  de  Theologicis  Studiis, 
nuperrime  edito,  tuam  viderim  notam  super  identi- 
tate  Bernardi  Cluniacensis.  Oppidum,  vulgo  Murles 
appellatur,  in  mea  diocesi  situm  est;  sed  numquam 
audieram  in  eo  natum  fuisse  pium  auctorem  Rhymthi 
de  gloria  celesti:  et  ipse  Neale  natalem  locum  dicti 
monachi  nostri  in  urbe  Britanniae  minoris  Morlaix 
reponit,  eumque  e  familia  anglica  ortum  affirmat.  Tua 
vero  sententia  maxima  mihi  arridet,  vellemque  cog- 
noscere  quidquid  de  vita,  scriptis  et  ipso  rhymtho 
Bernardi  publicatum  fuit  sic,  sive  in  Anglia,  sive  in 
Germania,  et  etiam  apud  nos.  Illud  de  benevolentia 
prasumo  quod  mihi  digneris  scribere  summam  bre- 
vem,  in  qua  possim  videre  quasnam  debeam  fontes 
adire,  quos  etiam  libros  percurrere  ut  convenienter 
de  tali  diocesano  meo,  et  natalibus  et  virtutibus  prae- 
claro  notitiam  acquirere  possim. 

Si  quadam  die,  Galliam  percurrendo,  Montempes- 
sulanum  visitare  desideras,  et  Deus  dies  meos  ad  hoc 
usque  tempus  servare  voluerit,  ad  antiquum  pagum 
Murles  te  ducere  mihi  honor  erit  et  gaudium,  am- 
boque  presec  nostras  effundemus  non  longe  a  ruderi- 
bus  veteris  castelli  ubi  forsan  Bernardus  natus  est. 

Me,  Domine  Optime,  tuus  obsequiosus  et  devotus 
servus  in  Christo,  crede, 

FR.  M.  A.  DE  CABRIERES, 
episcopus  Montempessulanensis. 


I  lost  no  time  in  accepting  this  interesting 
invitation.  The  bishop  was  a  perfect  type  of 
that  charming  kind  of  ecclesiastic  of  which 
the  French  clergy,  in  particular,  are  examples. 
He  was  tall  and  spare  of  figure,  with  an  ascetic 
beauty  of  countenance  which  made  his  face  a 
benediction;  his  manners  were  those  of  the 
gentlest  and  most  refined  of  grand  seigneurs 
of  the  ancien  regime.  I  was  glad  when  Pius  X. 
elevated  him  to  the  cardinalate,  in  which  ex 
alted  office,  alas,  he  lived  too  short  a  time. 

The  good  bishop  read  English  better  than 
he  spoke  it,  and  my  French  was  no  better,  I 
fear.  But  we  managed  to  get  along  well.  His 
library  was  a  place  of  joy  —  a  great  room 
lighted  by  diamond-paned  windows,  with  the 
atmosphere  of  a  monastic  scriptorium  hover 
ing  over  it.  The  visible  books  were  few,  save 
for  those  upon  his  table.  There  were  no  book 
cases.  The  books  were  all  kept  in  presses 
after  the  manner  of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  they 
still  are  in  the  Vatican  Library. 

But  we  did  not  see  Bernard's  birthplace  to 
gether.  The  bishop's  library  had  more  attrac 
tions  for  me  than  the  obscure  hamlet  in  the 
country  near  by.  Some  of  his  books  I  already 
knew,  more  of  them  I  had  read  of  but  not 
read.  But  books,  except  incunabula  and  those 
rarissimmi  libri  which  collectors  prize,  exist 
in  numbers  great  or  less;  examples  even  of 
the  rarest  books  may  be  found  in  the  British 
Museum  or  Harvard  University  Library. 


Manuscripts,  however,  are  birds  of  another 
feather.  There  may  be,  of  course,  several 
copies  of  a  manuscript.1  But  many  are  unique. 
In  the  small  collection  of  manuscripts  which 
the  bishop  possessed  was  one  which  soon  fixed 
my  attention. 

Every  one  knows  the  story  of  Browning's 
"Old  Yellow  Book,"  that  crumpled  mass  of 
parchment  in  which  he  discovered  the  plot  of 
The  Ring  and  the  Book,  a  manuscript  now 
among  the  cherished  treasures  of  a  great  li 
brary.  In  a  smaller  degree  such  a  discovery 
was  then  mine.  With  pride,  yet  with  a  certain 
measure  of  hesitation,  the  bishop  laid  before 
me  a  few  leaves  of  parchment  for  the  posses 
sion  of  which  he  whimsically  apologized.  It 
was  a  medieval  Latin  poem  composed  of  two 
hundred  and  forty  hexameter  lines,  covering 
eight  pages.  The  parchment  leaves  measured 
six  and  three-quarters  inches  in  length  by 

1  Some  ancient  authors  have  descended  to  modern 
times  in  one  MS.  only,  or  in  a  few  MSS.  derived  im 
mediately  or  with  little  interval  from  one.  Such  are 
Lucretius,  Catullus,  Valerius  Flaccus,  and  Statius  in 
his  "Silvse."  Others  there  are  whose  text,  though  in 
the  main  reposing  on  a  single  copy,  can  be  corrected 
here  and  there  from  others,  inferior  indeed,  but  still 
independent  and  indispensable.  Such  are  Juvenal, 
Ovid  in  his  "Heroides,"  Seneca  in  his  "Tragedies," 
and  Statius  in  his  "Thebais"  and  "Achilleis."  There 
is  a  third  class  whose  text  comes  down  from  a  remote 
original  through  separate  channels,  and  is  preserved 
by  MSS.  of  unlike  character  but  like  fidelity,  each 
serving  in  its  turn  to  correct  the  faults  of  others. 

A.  E.  Housman,  Manilius,  Astronomicon,  bk.  I, 
introd.  xxx-xxxi. 


four  inches  in  breadth.  The  text  itself  meas 
ured  five  and  three-quarters  inches  in  length 
by  two  and  three-quarters  inches  in  width. 
There  were  thirty  lines  to  a  page.  As  a  rule 
the  letters  of  the  manuscript  were  excellently 
formed,  but  small.  The  first  letters  of  each 
line  were  separated  from  the  others,  so  as  to 
appear  like  a  column  of  figures.  The  manu 
script  was  probably  of  the  late  thirteenth 
century.  Whether  it  was  the  original  or  a 
copy  of  the  original  I  am  unable  to  say.  It 
is  certainly  the  only  known  example  in  exist 
ence,  and  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  it  was 
the  original  handwriting  of  the  author.  See 
ing  my  intense  interest  in  the  poem,  the  good 
bishop  permitted  me  to  make  a  transcript 
of  it,  and  I  spent  two  arduous  but  delightful 
days  in  so  doing.  That  is  why  I  never  got 
to  Murles  with  the  bishop.  At  the  end  of 
this  term  I  had  already  imposed  too  much 
upon  his  time.  Dear  old  saintly  man,  I  cher 
ish  the  memory  of  him! 

The  poem  is  the  most  startlingly  pagan  ut 
terance  which  I  know  of  in  the  whole  field  of 
mediaeval  literature.  It  was  without  formal 
title,  the  only  indication  of  such  being  merely 
the  capital  letters  D.  V.  R.  at  the  head  of  the 
first  page.  For  a  time  they  had  for  me  the 
cabalistic  mystery  of  the  famous  DXV  of 
Dante  in  Purgatorio,  canto  xxxiii.  After  some 
study  of  the  manuscript  I  came  to  the  conclu 
sion  that  the  mysterious  letters  stood  for  De 


vera  religione—  -"Concerning  true  religion." 
This  title,  I  believe,  was  directly  borrowed  by 
the  unknown  writer  from  a  treatise  of  St. 
Augustine  with  the  same  title,  and  was  delib 
erately  so  chosen.  For  the  whole  purpose  of 
Augustine's  tract  is  to  prove  that  there  was  no 
religion  worthy  of  the  name  in  the  ancient 
pagan  cults;  while  the  whole  tenor  of  this 
poem  is  to  show  that  "forgotten  things,"  as 
Sir  Gilbert  Murray  has  reminded  us,  "  if  there 
be  real  life  in  them,  will  sometimes  return  out 
of  the  dust,  vivid  to  help  still  in  the  forward 
groping  of  humanity."  x 

In  the  history  of  thought  there  are  cycles, 
each  characterized  by  a  dominant  form  of 
thinking  and  a  peculiar  quality  of  the  imag 
ination.  The  lines  of  partition  are  not  always 
distinct  between  these  periods,  of  course,  and 
the  edge  of  one  epoch  blurs  into  that  of  the 
next.  But  nevertheless  the  differentiation  is 
manifest.  The  Renaissance  merged  into  the 
Reformation,  though  the  exact  point  of  trans 
formation  is  undiscernible.  The  dividing  line 
is  really  not  a  point  or  a  mark,  but  a 
penumbra. 

But  great  thoughts,  and  especially  great 
systems  of  thought  or  philosophy,  rarely 
wholly  die.  The  Greek  and  Latin  classics 
still  live,  and  nearly  every  high  philosophy 
yet  has  some  votaries.  Names  may  be 
changed,  but  the  teaching  remains  imperish- 

1  Four  stages  of  Greek  religion,  p.  184. 
8 


able.  Every  philosophic  system  may  be  con 
sidered  both  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  own 
time  and  of  all  time — from  the  latter  because 
it  presents  some  solution  to  the  problems 
which  the  universe  raises  that  an  intelligent 
mind  may  adopt.1 

Thus  it  happens  that  in  every  age  there  have 

^s  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  quite  just  when  he  writes: 
"The  briefest  possible  glance  at  the  old  systems  of 
philosophy  shows  us  ...  nothing  but  imperishable 
ruins  —  imperishable  aesthetically,  but  logically  mere 
crumbling  fragments.  We  can  still  read  Plato  with 
delight;  but  the  delight  is  due  to  the  beauty  of  style 
and  exposition,  not  certainly  to  the  conviction  im 
posed  by  his  reasoning.  Aristotle's  philosophy  is  a 
marvel  for  his  time;  but  his  theory  of  the  universe  is 
no  more  tenable  than  his  natural  science.  .  .  .  The 
vast  development  of  scholastic  philosophy  in  the 
Middle  Ages  showed  only  how  far  unlimited  ingenuity 
and  subtlety  may  lead  in  the  wrong  direction,  if  it 
starts  with  mistaken  principles.  It  ended  by  upset 
ting  the  doctrines  which  it  attempted  to  prove,  and 
had  finally  to  commit  suicide  or  fall  before  the  in 
surrection  of  living  thought.  The  great  who  revolted 
against  its  tyranny  in  its  later  stages  constructed  new 
systems  which,  to  them,  seemed  demonstrable,  but 
which  to  us  are  already  untenable.  We  cannot 
accept  Descartes  or  Spinoza  or  Leibnitz  or  Bacon  or 
Hobbes  or  Locke  as  giving  satisfactory  or  even 
coherent  systems.  .  .  .  Philosophies  of  every  differ 
ent  variety  have  been  not  merely  accepted  by  those 
who  first  devised  them,  but  have  been  taken  up  in 
good  faith  by  whole  schools  of  disciples;  they  have 
been  tested,  on  a  large  scale,  by  systematic  applica 
tion  to  all  relevant  questions,  and  one  after  another 
has  become  bankrupt,  has  lost  its  hold  on  the  world, 
and  confessed  that  it  leaves  the  riddle  as  dark  as  it 
was  before." — Leslie  Stephen,  "The  vanity  of  phil 
osophizing,"  in  Social  Rights  and  Duties,  vol.  2,  pp. 
187-89. 


been  souls  out  of  tune  with  the  prevailing  note 
of  their  time,  whose  spiritual  affiliation  is  with 
a  remoter,  earlier  epoch.  The  older  the  race 
grows,  and  the  greater  the  variety  and  accre 
tion  of  its  history,  the  more  numerous  do  these 
phenomena  surviving  from  a  former  period 
become  in  our  modern  life.  Whistler  was  a 
child  of  the  Renaissance,  Newman  of  the 
twelfth  century. 

Such  an  one  is,  we  say,  "misunderstood," 
when  we  should  say  that  he  is  "ununder- 
stood."  It  is  of  the  nature  of  man  to  look 
askance  at  the  votaries  of  unconventional 
things,  whether  of  art  or  literature,  of  phil 
osophy  or  religion.  Convention  owes  much 
of  its  force  to  mass  weight,  tradition,  the  in 
ertia  of  conservatism.  It  is,  therefore,  in  that 
degree,  a  denial  in  terms  of  imagination  in 
life.  When  convention  is  backed  by  the  au 
thority  of  state  or  church  to  enforce  conform 
ity  in  the  form  of  sumptuary  laws  governing 
clothes  and  attire,  or  in  the  form  of  dogmas 
prescribing  what  shall  be  believed  and  pro 
hibiting  what  shall  not  be  believed,  then  it  be 
comes  a  tyranny,  and  the  man  who  manifests 
unconventional  ideas  which  are  not  according 
to  the  standards  imposed  is  regarded  as  a 
rebel  or  a  heretic. 

For  many  years  it  was  the  prevailing  belief 
that  the  Middle  Ages  were  characterized  by 
an  absolute  ignorance  of  and  hostility  to  anti 
quity  until  the  Italian  Renaissance;  that  me- 

10 


diaeval  literature  and  mediaeval  art  were  spon 
taneously  developed,  in  full  originality,  with 
out  the  aid  of  ancient  thought  and  ancient  art. 
Only  of  late  has  this  erroneous  idea  been 
overthrown,  or  at  least  radically  modified. 
Modern  research  into  the  history  of  mediaeval 
culture  has  conclusively  shown  that  mediaeval 
literature  and  the  fine  arts  owed  much  both  of 
their  inspiration  and  their  form  to  the  persist 
ence  of  antiquity.1 

The  charm  of  antiquity  exerted  its  spell 
over  mediaeval  minds  more  than  we  think,  in 
spite  of  the  antagonism  between  mediaeval  and 
ancient  ideals.  The  opposition  between  the 
two  ideals  began  to  be  apparent  in  the  third 
century.  The  ancient  world  saw  its  genius 
expiring  in  the  time  of  the  Antonines.  After 


1  Anton  Springer,  Das  Nachleben  der  Antike  im 
Mittelalter,  2  vols.,  Bonn,  1886,  and  a  review  of  this 
work  by  Eugene  Muntz  in  Journal  des  Savants,  1887. 

Rahn,  Das  Erbe  der  Antike,  Basel,  1872. 

Bartoli,  /  Precursori  del  Rinascimento,  1876; 

Comparetti,  Virgilio  net  media  evo. 

Graf,  Roma  nella  memoria  e  nelle  immagiozioni 
del  media  evo. 

Gaston  Paris,  La  legende  de  Trajan. 

Gidel,  La  legende  d'Aristote. 

Sathas,  Roman  d'Achille. 

Paul  Meyer,  La  legende  d'Alexandre. 

Dunger,  Die  Sage  vom  trojanischen  Kriege  in  den 
Bearbeitungen  des  Mittelalters  und  ihre  antiken 
Quellen,  Leipzig,  1839. 

Boutaric,  La  connaissance  de  I'antiquite  chez 
Vincent  de  Beauvais. 

Julien,  "Alexandre  pendant  le  Moyen-Age,"  in 
Annales  archeologiques,  1847. 

11 


them  the  originality  of  the  mind  of  the  ancient 
world  utterly  disappeared;  the  taste  became 
banal;  thought  stagnant.  Christianity,  al 
though  in  part  suffering  from  the  universal 
decadence,  showed  a  greater  intellectual  and 
moral  force  than  the  secular  world,  and  began 
to  form  its  own  canons  of  literature  and  art. 
Yet  for  a  long  time  Christianity  was  content 
to  borrow  from  paganism  the  established  for 
mulae,  giving  them,  however,  a  new  applica 
tion  and  a  new  interpretation.  But  little  by 
little  truly  Christian  themes  developed.  Begun 
during  the  period  of  the  persecutions,  the 
transformation  was  completed  by  the  early 
fifth  century.  By  that  time  Christian  thought 
and  Christian  art,  even  though  retaining  a 
great  number  and  variety  of  motifs  which 
were  of  pagan  origin,  nevertheless  not  only 
had  developed  its  own  types,  but  had  crystal 
lized  them.  A  new  world  of  art  and  of  the 
spirit  had  come  into  being. 

During  the  first  period  belief  in  the  superi 
ority  of  Graeco-Roman  literature  and  art,  at 
least  from  the  point  of  view  of  form,  was  un 
challenged,  except  among  the  zealots  of  the 
faith.  What  was  denied  and  opposed  was  the 
immorality  of  the  ideas,  the  license  of  the  por 
trayal.  But  the  victory  of  the  church  in  the 
fourth  century  altered  the  relation  of  things. 
The  persecuted  church  became  the  triumphant 
church.  It  was  for  its  former  adversaries 
henceforward  to  plead  for  clemency. 

12 


What  attitude  did  the  church  adopt  towards 
the  literature,  the  art,  the  philosophy  of  anti 
quity?  It  was  one  chiefly  of  hostility  and 
icorioclasm.  "Let  us  shun  the  lying  fables  of 
the  poets  and  forego  the  wisdom  of  the  sages 
of  antiquity,"  exclaims  Gregory  of  Tours  in 
600  A.D.  Yet  centuries  of  spoliation  and 
neglect  were  required  to  waste  the  inestimable 
heritage  derived  from  the  past.  Perhaps  we 
may  regard  the  eleventh  century  as  the  epoch 
when  the  reminiscence  of  antiquity  ceased  to 
be  a  living  force  and  passed  into  the  domain 
of  history  and  erudition.  By  that  time  only 
a  few  strong  spirits  still  cherished  in  their 
secret  hearts  ideals  out  of  a  glorious  past,  and 
strove  to  breast  the  current  of  prejudice  and 
indifference. 

The  hostility  of  both  the  mediaeval  church 
and  the  mediaeval  princes  to  antiquity  was 
partly  a  matter  of  principle,  partly  instinctive. 
The  church  and  the  secular  powers  were 
banded  together  to  sustain  the  Christian  re 
ligion,  the  authority  of  the  church,  and  the 
polity  of  a  feudal  Europe  against  innovation 
and  change.  The  memory  of  ancient  Roman 
republicanism  was  a  prolific  inspiration  to 
revolution  in  certain  parts  of  mediaeval  Eu 
rope  and  most  of  all  in  Rome.  In  998  Nicho 
las  Crescentius,  the  son  of  a  tribune  of  Rome, 
attempted  to  overthrow  the  papal  domination 
by  an  impassioned  appeal  to  the  glories  of 
pagan  and  republican  Rome.  Out  of  frag- 

13 


ments  of  ancient  ruins  he  built  that  pictur 
esque  little  house  which  still  stands  facing  the 
Ponto  Rotto.  In  the  twelfth  century  Arnold  of 
Brescia  proclaimed  the  necessity  of  destroying 
the  temporal  power  of  the  popes  and  the  re 
building  of  the  Capitol.  The  same  enthusiasm 
for  antiquity  fired  Cola  di  Rienzi.  Yet  even 
in  the  Kulturdammerung  of  the  eleventh  cen 
tury  there  are  gleams  of  the  old  light.  Andre 
of  Fleury  [died  circa  1056],  describing  the 
architectural  changes  which  his  superior,  the 
abbot  Gosselin,  made  in  that  monastery,  uses 
the  famous  phrase  attributed  to  Augustus: 
urbem  laterciam  repperi,  relinquam  mar- 
moream. 

In  the  twelfth  century  a  new  spirit,  or  rather 
the  old  spirit  become  new,  began  to  blow 
across  Europe,  which  drew  its  inspiration 
from  the  pagan  world.  Ancient  culture  began 
slowly  to  come  into  its  own  once  more.  Arch 
bishop  Heraclius  of  Lyons  [died  1163]  wrote 
a  treatise  entitled:  De  coloribus  et  artibus 
Romanorum,  in  which  he  deplored  the  de 
struction  of  the  monuments  of  antiquity.  Pil 
grimages  to  Rome  stimulated  interest  in  the 
remote  past. 

Bishop  Henry  of  Winchester  [1129-71]  re 
turned  from  a  visit  to  the  Eternal  City  with  a 
great  collection  of  ancient  marbles,  to  the 
astonishment  of  his  people.  In  Germany 
Hildesheim  early  became  the  seat  of  a  fascin 
ating  artistic  renaissance.  Bishop  Bernward 

14 


[993-1022],  inspired  by  a  visit  to  Italy,  the 
country  most  redolent  of  antiquity  and  pagan 
tradition,  with  the  aid  of  imported  Italian 
craftsmen,  created  those  exquisite  bronze 
doors  which  separate  the  west  vestibule  from 
the  nave  in  Hildesheim  cathedral.  Italy  itself 
had  nothing  approaching  them  until  Ghiberti 
created  those  world  famous  bronze  doors  of 
the  Battistero  in  Florence.  In  twelfth  cen 
tury  France  "Hildebert  of  Le  Mans  was  a 
classical  scholar,  and  in  his  time  unmatched 
as  a  writer  of  Latin  prose  and  verse.  Many  of 
his  elegiac  poems  survive,  some  of  them,"  says 
Taylor,  "so  antique  in  sentiment  and  so  cor 
rect  in  metre  as  to  have  been  taken  for  pro 
ducts  of  the  pagan  period.  One  of  the  best  is 
an  elegy  on  Rome  obviously  inspired  by  his 
visit  to  that  city  of  ruins."  * 

This  reviving  interest  in  antiquity  did  not 
pass  unchallenged.  The  church  was  not  un 
willing  to  have  scholars  like  John  of  Salisbury 
toy  with  classical  literature  as  an  intellectual 
diversion.  But  it  was  quite  another  thing  in 
the  church's  eye  to  have  men  derive  a  spiritual 
inspiration  from  the  founts  of  paganism.  The 
"pious"  and  the  self-righteous  bitterly  in 
veighed  against  the  lovers  of  ancient  culture. 
"Who  now  toils  to  learn  the  divine  writings 
so  much  as  those  that  are  pagan?"  Bernard  of 

"On  Hildebert  of  Le  Mans  see  Taylor,  The  Me 
diaeval  Mind,  vol.  II,  pp.  137-47.  His  elegy  on  the 
ruins  of  Rome  is  given  in  vol.  II,  pp.  191-92. 

15 


Cluny  scornfully  exclaims.  "He  that  babbles 
Socrates  and  has  the  sinuous  utterances  of  the 
sophists  at  his  fingers'  ends  —  he  is  made  an 
abbot.  ...  A  great  man  is  he  who  knows 
Agenor  and  Melibceus  and  Sapphic  verse. 
The  letters  of  old,  the  muse  of  old,  are  now 
highly  prized  and  thought  the  cream  of 
wisdom." 

The  leaven  of  antiquity  worked  a  spirit  of 
intellectual  revolt  in  Italy  as  early  as  the 
eleventh  century.  Vilgard,  master  of  the 
school  at  Ravenna,  declared  that  what  the 
ancient  poets  had  said  was  true,  and  that  they 
were  worthier  of  belief  than  the  Christian 
mysteries.1 

In  the  reign  of  Robert  the  Pious  of  France 
a  considerable  sect  of  heretics  developed  in 
the  vicinity  of  Orleans,  who  declared  that 
miracles  were  fables  and  repudiated  almost 
the  whole  body  of  Christian  mysteries.  Many 
of  them  were  burned  at  the  stake — the  earliest 
example  of  what  became  a  common  practice 
of  the  Inquisition  in  the  thirteenth  century.2 
The  first  conspicuous  victim  of  the  church  who 
was  condemned  because  he  followed  the  lure 
of  ancient  thought  too  far  was  Amaury  of 
Chartres,  who  was  professor  of  logic  and  exe 
gesis  in  the  University  of  Paris,  and  who  fell 
under  the  spell  of  Plotinus  and  became  a  Neo- 

1  Rodolf  Glaber,  Historiarum,  Bk.  II,  ch.  12. 
2Rodolf  Glaber,  Bk.  Ill,  ch.  8;  Renan,  Aver  roes  et 
averroisme,  p.  282. 

16 


Platonist,  though  he  borrowed  much  also 
from  the  Stoics  and  Aristotle.  Condemned  as 
a  pantheist  he  was  burned  with  ten  of  his  fol 
lowers  in  the  first  decade  of  the  thirteenth 
century.1  Roger  Bacon  was  profoundly  im 
bued  with  paganism,  declaring  that  "we  should 
seek  in  the  books  of  the  ancient  philosophers 
the  soul  of  truth  which  revelation  placed 
there;  that  we  should  follow  up  the  traces  of 
Christian  dogma  in  paganism  [a  most  pene 
trating  utterance]  and  thus  add  all  we  can  to 
our  inherited  treasure  usque  ad  finem  mundi, 
quia  nihil  perfectum  in  humanis  adinvention- 
ibus."  •'  He  had  the  courage  to  say  that  "con 
temporary  Christians  were  inferior  morally  to 
the  pagan  philosophers,  from  whose  books 
they  might  well  take  a  leaf."  3 

While  it  is  true,  as  Coulton  has  observed, 
that  "the  more  abstract  dogmas  inherited  from 
the  early  ages  of  Greek  discussion — the  Greek 
ages,  tinged  with  Greek  philosophy  —  never 
seem  to  have  influenced  the  popular  mind 
very  much,"  4  nevertheless,  especially  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  there  were  many  classes 
of  society  deeply  penetrated  by  the  pagan 

*For  literature  on  Amaury  of  Chartres  see  Cheva 
lier,  Bio-biblio graphic,  p.  95. 

2  See  quotation  in  De  Wulf,  History  of  Mediaeval 
Philosophy,  p.  393. 

3  Thorndike,  "Roger  Bacon,"  in  American  Histor 
ical  Revieiv,  Jan.,  1916,  p.  247. 

4  Coulton,  "The  Plain  Man's  Religion  in  the  Middle 
Ages."  Hibbert  Journal,  April,  1916,  p.  596. 

17 


philosophic  thought  of  antiquity.  Plato,  Aris 
totle,  and  Lucretius  were  the  greatest  of  these 
influences.  That  of  the  first  tended  towards 
pantheism  and  was  far  less  destructive  of 
established  authority  than  the  two  others. 
Enormous  and  revolutionary  as  the  influence 
of  Aristotle  was  upon  mediaeval  thought,  its 
effect  was  wholly  among  the  highest  intel 
lectual  circles,  chiefly  at  Paris,  where  the 
university  was  deeply  imbued  with  academic 
skepticism. 

The  philosophy  of  Lucretius,  on  the  other 
hand,  pervaded  various  strata  of  middle  class 
society  and  was  disquieting  and  destructive  of 
prevailing  authority  in  both  church  and  state, 
in  especial  in  the  case  of  the  former.  Medi 
aeval  Epicureanism  became  the  vogue  of  her 
etics,  of  rationalists,  of  the  Ghibelline  parti 
sans  of  the  independence  of  the  state  from 
church  control  in  Germany  and  Italy;  in 
France  it  backed  the  arm  of  Philip  IV.  in  his 
great  conflict  with  pope  Boniface  VIII.  It  is 
implicit  in  the  teachings  of  John  of  Jandun 
and  Marsiglio  of  Padua.  The  Florentine  histo 
rian  Villani 1  records  how  Florence  was  twice 
devastated  by  fire,  once  in  1115  and  again  in 
1117,  and  attributes  the  double  calamity  to  a 
judgment  of  God,  "forasmuch  as  the  city  was 
evilly  corrupted  by  heresy,  among  others  by 
the  sect  of  the  Epicureans  —  and  this  plague 
endured  long  time  in  Florence  until  the  com- 

'Bk.  iv,  sec.  30. 

18 


ing  of  the  holy  religions  of  St.  Francis  and  of 
St.  Dominic."  1 

The  most  positive  influence,  though,  of  Lu 
cretius  is  perceived  in  the  beliefs  and  prac 
tices  of  the  sect  of  the  Cathari,  the  greatest 
heretical  sect  of  the  thirteenth  century.  It 
spread  all  over  southern  France,  and  was 
largely  recruited  from  the  industrial  classes 
of  the  thriving  manufacturing  towns  of  Lan- 
guedoc.2 

"The  youthful  'perfects'  of  the  sect,"  says 
De  Wulf,  "were  wont  to  frequent  the  schools 
of  Paris  or  throughout  Italy  in  the  later  years 
of  the  Albigensian  period  [and]  to  attack  the 
savants  of  the  Dominican  Order  .  .  .  The 
Cathari  taught  in  their  psychology  that  the 
human  spiritus  perishes  with  the  body.  .  .  . 
Their  favorite  sources  were  Epicurus  and 
Lucretius,  whose  materialistic  atomism  they 
reproduced.  And  having  disposed  to  their 
satisfaction  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
they  boldly  denied  the  doctrine  of  reward  and 
punishment  for  good  and  evil."  3 

1  It  is  to  this  sect  that  Dante  alludes  in  Inferno, 
canto  10,  although  the  commentators  usually  take  it 
to  be  an  allusion  to  Frederick  II.  and  his  votaries. 
So  Plumtre  and  Norton,  and  Kington-Oliphant,  The 
emperor  Frederick  II.,  I,  371.     Ozanam,  Dante,  6th 
ed.,  1872,  p.  48,  and  Renan,  Averroes  et  averroisme, 
p.  284,  rightly  trace  the  reference  to  1115. 

2  See  Alphandery,  Les  idees  morales  chez  les  heter- 
doxes  latins  au  debut  du  XIHe  siecle. 

3  De  Wulf,   History   of  Philosophy,   pp.   389,   219. 
For  a  comprehensive  history  of  the  preservation  and 
influence    of    Lucretius    in    the    Middle    Ages    see 

19 


The  result  of  all  this  intellectual  ferment 
was  a  degree  of  rationalism  in  the  later  Middle 
Ages  of  which  but  few  are  aware.1  Indeed, 
in  courage  and  penetration  the  skepticism  of 
the  thirteenth  century  probably  exceeded  what 
is  current  now.  Where  to-day  is  the  univer 
sity  professor  who  would  have  the  hardihood 
to  pronounce  the  Impossibilia  of  Siger  of 
Brabant?  2 

That  "eternal  spirit  of  the  chainless  mind" 
never  has  been  utterly  coerced  in  spite  of 
thrones  and  dominions,  principalities  and 

Phillips,  Lucrece  dans  la  theologie  chretienne  du  Hie 
au  XIHe  siecle,  Paris,  1896.  A  briefer  statement  is 
in  De  Wulf,  loc.  cit.,  pp.  59  and  126.  Renan,  Averroes, 
etc.,  pt.  II,  sec.  12,  contains  a  valuable  survey  of  the 
history  of  the  introduction  of  Arabic  philosophy  into 
Europe. 

1  For  some  striking  examples  see  Coulton  in  Hib- 
bert  Journal,  April,  1916,  p.  598. 

2  See   P.   Mandonnet,  Siger   de  Brabant  et  I'aver- 
roisme  latin  du  XIHe  siecle  (1911)  ;    Hist.  lit.  de  la 
France,  XXI,  pp.  121-22. 

In  Brewer's  edition  of  the  Monumenta  Franciscana 
(Rolls  Series),  vol.  I,  p.  634,  is  report  of  a  discussion 
by  some  mediaeval  students  of  the  question:  "Utrum 
sit  Deus?"  Cf.  Church's  translation  of  Dante,  Hell, 
canto  X,  p.  79,  note  119.  The  chief  Averroistic  centres 
were  the  University  of  Paris  and  the  court  of  Fred 
erick  II.  of  Hohenstaufen  at  Salerno.  The  Paris 
leaders  were  Siger  of  Brabant,  Boethius  the  Dacian, 
and  Bernier  of  Nivelles.  Siger  flourished  1266-77. 
In  the  latter  year  he  was  condemned  by  the  church. 
Raymond  Lull,  in  order  to  justify  the  sentence,  com 
posed  a  dialogue  in  which  the  "philosophici,"  repre 
sented  by  Socrates  as  interlocutor,  were  badly  handled 
by  the  theologians.  See  Hist.  lit.  de  la  France,  vol. 
xxix,  p.  333.  Dante  praises  Siger  in  Paradiso,  canto 
X,  136. 

20 


powers,  lords  spiritual  and  lords  temporal. 
In  every  century  of  the  mediaeval  era  there 
lived  souls  who  would  not  be  wholly  shackled.1 

1  See  the  article  by  Paul  Fournier,  "Un  adversaire 
inconnu  de  St.  Bernard  et  de  Pierre  Lombard,"  in 
Bib.  de  Vecole  des  chartes,  xlvii  (1886),  p.  394.  It 
is  a  MS.  from  the  Grande  Chartreuse  in  the  library 
at  Grenoble,  No.  290  (see  Catalogue  des  manuscrits, 
Gren.  p.  215)  entitled  Liber  de  vera  philosophic,. 
Evidently  written  after  1179,  it  shows  the  abiding  in 
fluence  of  the  sect  founded  by  Gilbert  de  Porree, 
bishop  of  Poitiers.  "What  influence,"  says  Fournier, 
"this  little  group  had  upon  the  development  of  the 
popular  heresies  which  so  spread  at  this  time  in  the 
south  of  France  is  a  question  which  it  would  be  inter 
esting  to  resolve,  and  one  which  merits  the  attention 
of  scholars." — Bib.  de  Vecole  des  chartes,  xlvii,  p.  417. 
One  of  the  boldest  heretical  writers  of  the  time — 
was  he  our  poet? — was  Vidal  de  Blois,  author  of  a 
satire  upon  scholasticism  entitled,  "Le  livre  de  Geta 
et  de  Birria,  ou  FAmphitryoneide,"  written  in  Latin, 
of  course.  He  probably  lived  in  the  time  of  Louis  IX. 
of  France,  but  it  is  not  certain  that  he  was  a  native 
of  Blois.  The  poem  is  daringly  pro-pagan.  One 
line  reads: 

Nil  audet  magnum  qui  putet  esse  deos. 
This  declaration  so  scandalized  Cardinal  Mai,  who 
discovered  the  manuscript  in  the  Vatican  Library  in 
1833,  that  he  suppressed  it  in  his  edition,  without  in 
dicating  the  lacuna.  See  his  Classici  Auctores,  vol. 
V,  pp.  463-78.  Later  editions  of  this  satire  are  those 
of  Thomas  Wright,  Early  Mysteries,  1838,  and  of 
Miiller  at  Bern,  1840.  For  other  information  on 
Vidal  of  Blois  see  Bib.  de  Vecole  des  chartes,  ser.  iv, 
vol.  5,  pp.  474-516;  Hist.  lit.  de  la  France,  XV,  pp.  428- 
34;  XXII,  pp.  39-50;  Journal  des  Savants,  1886,  pp. 
421-24;  Renan,  Averroes,  etc.,  p.  283.  A  sermon  of 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas  delivered  July  20,  1270,  and 
severely  reflecting  on  the  votaries  of  pagan  philosophy 
and  those  who  doubted  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
may  have  been  a  rejoinder  to  this  poem  of  Vidal.  See 
Mandonnet,  loc.  cit.,  p.  109,  note. 

21 


The  bravest  rebels  defied  and  suffered  accord 
ingly.  Many  such  maintained  a  dual  exist 
ence,  like  Roger  Bacon,  outwardly  orthodox, 
but  inwardly  living  their  own  intellectual  and 
spiritual  life,  telling  few  or  none  their  inmost 
thoughts;  sometimes  endeavoring  to  roll  the 
burden  off  by  committing  their  reflections  to 
secret  pages,  or  writing  them  in  cipher,  like  a 
recently  discovered  manuscript  of  Bacon. 

What  is  the  function  of  the  heretic?  Let 
Nietzsche  answer: 

"The  philosopher,  as  a  man  indispensable  for  the 
morrow  and  the  day  after  to-morrow,  has  ever  found 
himself,  and  has  been  obliged  to  find  himself,  in 
contradiction  to  the  day  in  which  he  lives.  His  enemy 
has  always  been  the  ideal  of  his  day.  Hitherto  all 
those  extraordinary  furtherers  of  humanity  whom 
one  classes  as  philosophers  .  .  .  have  found  their 
mission  in  being  the  bad  conscience  of  their  age.  .  .  . 
They  have  always  disclosed  how  much  hypocrisy,  in 
dolence,  self-indulgence,  and  self-neglect,  how  much 
falsehood,  was  concealed  under  the  most  venerated 
types  of  contemporary  morality;  how  much  virtue 
was  outlived."  1 

The  same  thought  has  been  expressed  in  other 
words  by  the  late  professor  Josiah  Royce: 

"Philosophical  thought  that  has  never  been  skepti 
cal  is  sure  not  to  be  deep.  The  soul  that  never  has 
doubted  does  not  know  whether  it  believes.  ...  A 
study  of  history  shows  that  if  there  is  anything  that 
human  thought  and  cultivation  have  to  be  thankful 
for  it  is  an  occasional,  but  truly  great  and  fearless 
age  of  doubt."3 

Nietzsche,  Beyond  Good  and  Evil,  p.  153. 

2  Royce,  The  Spirit  of  modern  philosophy,  p.  7. 

22 


Ninety-nine  per  centum  of  a  man's  religion 
is  the  result  of  inheritance  and  environment. 
It  is  the  one-hundredth  per  centum  of  origin 
ality  that  counts.1  How  the  unknown  author 
of  this  poem,  cherishing  the  ideas  which  he 
did,  and  loving  the  vanished  pagan  cults  so 
passionately  —  almost  as  passionately,  one 
might  say,  as  the  emperor  Julian  ten  cen 
turies  before  him  —  survived  in  the  depth  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  to 
conjecture.  It  is  small  wonder  that  his  iden 
tity  is  not  revealed  in  the  manuscript.  Even 
to-day  Maeterlinck's  works  are  on  the  Index 
of  the  church  of  Rome  because,  to  quote  from 
the  indictment, 

"he  has  accepted  the  fiat  of  the  destructive  criti 
cism  of  science.  For  him  religion  is  a  city  laid  waste, 
God  is  a  myth  as  completely  dethroned  as  Jupiter 
Olympus;  Christianity  is  a  discredited  system  rele 
gated  to  the  regions  of  exploded  beliefs  with  the 
crumbled  theogonies  of  Greece  and  Babylon." 

What  would  Rome  have  done  with  this  poet 
had  it  discovered  him  in  a  century  when  the 
inquisition  was  at  its  height? 

The  unknown  author  of  the  poem  whose 
discovery  has  been  related  was  one  whose 
taste  and  quality  of  thought  made  him  a 
"Strayed  Reveller"  out  of  antiquity  into  the 
scholastic  period,  a  veritable  pagan  in  the  age 
of  dogmatic  theology.  Who  he  was — I  mean 

'The  thought  is  Coulton's,  in  Hibbert  Journal, 
April,  1916,  p.  593. 

23 


his  name — I  do  not  know.  When  he  lived 
can  only  be  conjectured  from  internal  evi 
dence  in  the  poem;  that  he  was  French  by 
birth  is  certain,  and  he  was  surely  a  cleric. 
Judging  from  a  striking  allusion  to  "the 
granite  piles  of  Carnac"  and  a  reference  to 
"Atlantic's  surge"  he  may  have  been  a  Breton.1 
He  must  have  lived  in  the  thirteenth  century. 
His  enthusiastic  allusion  to  Aristotle's  phil 
osophy,  which  was  condemned  by  the  church 
in  1210,  makes  one  think  that  he  was  writing 
when  ecclesiastical  authority  was  vainly  try 
ing  to  seal  the  books  of  the  great  Stagirite  to 
Europe's  increasingly  inquiring  mind.2  A 
reference  to  the  Lateran  shows  that  the  poem 
must  have  been  composed  before  the  fall  of 
Boniface  in  1303,  before  the  removal  of  the 
papacy  to  Avignon.  But  the  most  conclusive 
evidence  as  to  the  time  when  the  author  lived 
is  offered  by  the  striking  allusion  to  the  pyra 
mids,  which  could  hardly  have  been  so  vividly 
mentioned  before  St.  Louis  of  France's  ill- 
starred  expedition  to  Egypt  in  1248.  The 
reference  is  so  fresh  that  it  is  almost  impos 
sible  not  to  think  of  it  as  derived  from  first- 


1  Brittany  to-day  is  the  most  intensely  catholic  por 
tion  of  France.     But  this  Catholicism  dates  from  the 
seventeenth  century.     In  the  Middle  Ages  Brittany 
was  notorious  for  the  active  influence  of  many  ves 
tiges  of  ancient  paganism.    See  the  thesis  of  Camille 
Vallaux,  La  Basse-Bretagne,  Paris,  1907. 

2  On  Aristotle  in  the  Middle  Ages  see  De  Wulf, 
loc.  cit.,  pp.  251-53. 

24 


hand  observation,  or  at  least  from  one  who 
had  seen  the  pyramids  with  his  own  eyes. 

There  are  things  in  the  poem  of  which 
Dante,  too,  makes  mention.  Each  alludes  to 
the  legend  that  pope  Gregory  the  Great  de 
plored  that  so  good  a  man  as  the  Roman  em 
peror  Trajan,  because  he  was  a  heathen,  was 
not  saved.  But  such  allusions  are  mere  acci 
dental  identities.  Modern  research  has  shown 
the  improbability  of  Dante  ever  having  been 
in  Paris  or  elsewhere  outside  of  Italy.  More 
over,  Dante  was  born  in  1265  and  died  in 
1321.  His  great  poem  was  not  given  to  the 
world  until  close  to  the  end  of  his  life.  Our 
poet,  I  am  sure,  lived  and  died  in  the  thir 
teenth  century.  There  is  one  allusion,  though, 
which  teases  out  of  thought: 

"Nam  etiam  tenebris  immersum  Tartaron  atra 
In  lucem  de  node  vocant."  * 

Did  the  poet  know  Dante's  Inferno?  I  think 
not.  It  is  the  protest  of  outraged  intelligence 
against  popular  belief  in  a  material  hell  of 
fire  and  brimstone.  The  spirit  and  temper  of 
this  poem  are  absolutely  antithetic  to  Dante.2 
The  temper  is  pagan  Greek  of  the  fourth  cen 
tury,  it  is  that  of  Julian  and  the  dying  gods. 
Whoever  the  author  was,  he  read  and  cher- 

1  "For  there  are  those  who  summon  hell  itself  into 
daylight  out  of  black  night  and  the  gulf  of  shadows." 

2  The  way  in  which  Dante  looked  upon  the  "  pagan 
ism"  of  the  court  of  Frederick  II.  is  evidence  of  this. 
See  Hell,  canto  X. 

25 


ished  in  his  secret  soul  Lucretius'  noble  poem, 
De  rerum  natura,  the  Meditations  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  the  Astronomicon  of  Manilius,  Ver 
gil,  and  Aristotle's  philosophy.  Aristotle  was, 
of  course,  by  the  thirteenth  century,  available 
in  Latin  version  through  the  medium  of 
Arabic  and  Jewish  scholarship.  The  same  is 
true  of  Plato  and  Neo-Platonic  thought,  es 
pecially  Plotinus,  whose  influence  is  apparent 
in  parts  of  the  poem.1 

The  problem  presented  by  the  undoubted 

1  Most  of  these  authors  are  too  well  known  to  need 
more  than  mention.  But  a  word  may  be  in  point 
about  Manilius.  He  lived  in  the  reign  of  Augustus, 
being  younger  than  Lucretius  and  a  contemporary  of 
Vergil.  His  poem,  in  five  books  of  hexameter  verse, 
is  an  astrological  treatise  abounding  in  zodiacal  allu 
sions  and  mathematical  terms  like  triangles,  hexa 
gons,  dodecatemories,  and  the  dodecatemories  of 
dodecatemories.  Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  its  apparent 
absurdity,  it  is  a  sober  and  serious  work  which  well 
repays  reading.  Goethe,  perhaps  the  greatest  of 
modern  pagans,  knew  Manilius  well  and  inscribed 
four  of  his  lines  in  the  Visitors'  Book  on  the  heights 
of  the  Brocken,  Sept.  4,  1784: 

Impendendus  homo  est,  deus  esse  ut  possit  in  ipso; 
Quis  dubitet  post  haec  hominem  conjungere  coelo? 
Quin  coelum  posset  nisi  coeli  munere  nosse? 
Et  reperire  deum,  nisi  qui  pars  deorum  est? 

Man  must  be  weighed  as  if  there  were  a  god  in  him. 

Who  will  hesitate  to  link  man  with  heaven? 

Who  can  know  heaven  save  by  the  boon  of  heaven? 

Who  can  find  out  God  save  one  who  has  a  portion 
with  the  gods? 

See  Kramer,  Ort  und  Zeit  der  Abfassung  der 
Astronomic  des  Manilius,  p.  24;  Ellis,  Nodes 
Manilianae,  p.  viii. 

26 


use  of  Marcus  Aurelius'  Meditations  by  this 
unknown  author  is  a  difficult  and  fascinating 
one.  Hitherto  scholars  have  been  absolutely 
certain  that  the  Thoughts  of  Marcus  Aurelius 
were  unknown  to  any  writer  in  the  Latin  West 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  same  conviction 


Two  of  the  five  books  of  Manillas  have  recently  been 
edited  with  great  erudition  by  Mr.  A.  E.  Housman, 
who  is  both  a  Latin  scholar  and  a  poet,  and  an  Eng 
lish  translation  of  the  second  book  published  by  Mr. 
H.  W.  Garrod,  of  Merton  College,  Oxford.  The  former 
says  of  Manilius: 

"The  last  of  the  poets  to  feel  the  impulsion  of  the 
furor  arduus  of  philosophic  speculation,  he  addresses 
himself  with  arresting  insistency  to  men  in  whom  the 
age-long  fact  of  social  and  moral  confusion  had  well 
nigh  killed  faith  in  an  order  of  the  universe  .... 
[he  hadl  an  unconquerable  conviction  of  the  para- 
mountcy  of  reason  .  .  .  [and]  a  singular  freedom 
from  superstition.  ...  In  his  detachment  from  su 
perstition  and  in  the  lofty  expression  which  he  gives 
to  this  freedom,  Manilius  is  the  peer  of  Lucretius." 
And  Mr.  Garrod:  "No  one  of  the  poets  of  stoicism 
has  heard  more  clearly  the  call  of  the  universe  to  its 
children  or  felt  more  powerfully  the  homesickness  of 
humanity  aspiring  to  a  reunion  with  that  which  is 
divine."  Introd.,  xii. 

The  most  famous  Jewish  Neo-Platonist  in  the 
Middle  Ages  was  Solomon  Ibn-Gabirol,  born  at 
Malaga  in  Spain,  1021,  died  1070. 

"His  poetry  is  characterized  by  its  finish  of  form 
and  loftiness  of  thought.  His  poems  are  mostly  seri 
ous,  sometimes  gloomy.  The  most  important  of  these 
is  his  'Royal  Crown'  ('Kether  Malkuth'),  a  religio- 
philosophical  meditation,  which  has  been  translated 
into  almost  every  European  language.  Many  of  his 
numerous  religious  poems  have  been  incorporated  in 
the  Jewish  liturgy.  Of  his  philosophical  works, 
written  in  Arabic,  the  principal  one  is  the  "Fountain 
of  Life,"  based  on  the  Neoplatonic  system.  Its  Latin 

27 


is  attached  to  the  history  of  Manilius'  Astro- 
nomicon.  Our  knowledge  of  both  of  them 
goes  no  further  back  than  the  fifteenth  cen 
tury.  But  this  view  must  now  be  revised,  for 
at  least  one  bright  spirit  knew  and  loved  their 
works  in  the  thirteenth  century.  So  far  as  we 
have  positive  knowledge,  the  philosophy  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  was  not  known  to  the  Latin 
West  in  the  Middle  Ages.1  No  mediaeval  Latin 

translation,  'Fons  Vitae'  is  often  quoted  by  Albert 
the  Great,  Thomas  Aquinas,  Giordano  Bruno,  and 
others.  He  also  wrote  an  ethical  work,  "Introduction 
for  the  Attaining  of  Good  Habits  of  the  Soul" 
OTikun  Midoth  ha-Nefesh'),  and  a  collection  of 
proverbs  ("Selection  of  Pearls,"  'Mibhar  ha-Peni- 
nim')." — (From  Century  Dictionary  of  Names.) 

There  is  an  excellent  article  upon  him  in  the  last 
edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica. 

1 "  The  complete  work  was  possibly  left  behind  at 
Rome  in  safe  keeping.  After  the  death  of  Marcus 
some  friendly  hand  whether  of  Pompeianus  or  Vic- 
torinus  or  Severus  rescued  it  from  its  unworthy  sur 
roundings  under  Commodus  and  gave  it  to  the  world. 
Perhaps  this  inestimable  service  was  performed  by  a 
daughter,  Cornificia,  whose  only  utterance  that  has 
come  down  to  us  breathes  the  spirit  of  her  father's 
Thoughts.  .  .  .  Posterity  had  indeed  cause  to  bless 
the  unknown  benefactor  who  caused  to  be  published 
this  Megalophelestaton  Biblion.  But  it  does  not  seem 
to  have  attracted  much  attention  at  the  time,  or  for 
centuries  after.  We  can  trace  it  but  fitfully  through 
the  ages,  as  known  to  one  here  and  there,  to  a  Them- 
istius,  an  Arethas,  a  Suidas,  a  Tzetzes.  Hardly  did 
it  win  through  to  our  own  days  in  one  MS.  now  lost 
and  in  another  that  is  incomplete,  and  it  narrowly 
escaped  the  fate  of  coming  to  us  merely  as  disjecta 
membra  in  one  of  those  anthologies  which  we  owe 
to  the  'moths  of  history,'  the  excerptors  and  epito- 
mizers." —  C.  R.  Haines,  "The  composition  and  chron- 

28 


translation  of  the  Meditations  is  mentioned  by 
any  western  writer;  the  earliest  known  manu 
script,  now  lost,  was  in  the  original  Greek  and 
came  to  light  during  the  Renaissance.  Even 
the  internal  evidence  in  the  writings  of  the 
great  philosophic  and  religious  authors  of  the 
Middle  Age  affords  no  clue  that  they  had  any 
knowledge,  direct  or  indirect,  of  the  Medita 
tions.  Yet  the  indebtedness  of  our  poet  to  him 
is  very  large  and  very  evident.  He  must  have 
had  a  now  lost  and  unmentioned  Latin  version 
of  the  Meditations  in  his  hand,  for  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  think  that  he  had  a  first-hand 
knowledge  of  Greek  and  had  the  Greek  ori 
ginal  before  him,  although  modern  research 
has  shown  that  a  knowledge  of  Greek  in  the 
West  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  deeper  and 
broader  than  was  once  supposed.1  It  is  cer 
tainly  of  moment  in  the  intellectual  history  of 
Europe  that  even  one  mediaeval  scholar  has 
been  found  who  was  familiar  with  the  writings 
of  the  only  philosopher  who  ever  sate  upon  a 
throne.  We  have  here  a  new  tribute  to  the 
perennial  vigor  of  the  Neo-Stoic  philosophy. 
In  every  century  since  its  birth  the  Stoic 
philosophy,  or  what  is  more  usually  known 
as  Neo-Stoicism,  has  had  some  followers.  No 

ology  of  the  Thoughts  of  Marcus  Aurelius,"  Journal 
of  Phil,  xxxiii,  1914,  pp.  294-95.  Cf.  Harris  Kendall's 
translation  of  the  Meditations,  introd.,  p.  cxv,  and 
pp.  17  note,  and  201. 

1  See   De  Wulf,   History   of   mediaeval   philosophy, 
pp.  167-68,  and  especially  pp.  243-47. 

29 


philosophy  covers  the  whole  case  of  the  soul. 
But  men  rise  on  the  stepping-stones  which 
other  seekers  after  God  have  laid.1 

Erasmus  said  of  Seneca:  "If  you  read  him 
like  a  Christian,  he  wrote  like  a  heathen.  If 
you  read  him  like  a  heathen,  he  wrote  like  a 
Christian."  Mr.  Edwyn  Bevan  has  written : 

"If  some  of  the  most  cultured  Christian  converts 
like  Justin  and  Augustine  have  passed  into  the  church 
through  the  portals  of  the  Stoic  philosophy  in  the 
past,  not  a  few  of  our  modern  thinkers  have  passed 
through  the  open  door  of  the  church  into  the  porch 
of  Neo-Stoicism,  i.e.,  the  application  of  the  inculca 
tions  of  duty  to  humanity  as  a  living  organism.  .  .  . 
Neo-Stoicism  owes  not  a  little  of  its  content,  its  earn 
estness,  its  moral  ardour,  to  the  influence  of  early 
Christian  nurture."  2 


1  St.  Ambrose  "  was  strongly  influenced  by  the  popu 
lar  morality  of  Ciceronian  Stoicism,  which  was  wide 
spread  among  cultured  western  Christians,  and  which 
had,    by    its    combination  *with    monastic    morality, 
brought  about,  in  Pelagianism,  the  crisis  so  decisive 
for  the  dogmatics  of  the  west." — Harnack,  History  of 
Dogma,  V,  p.  49. 

[Pelagianism]  "is  the  consistent  outcome  of  the 
Christian  rationalism  that  had  long  been  wide  spread 
in  the  west  especially  among  the  more  cultured  that 
had  been  nourished  by  the  popular  philosophy  in 
fluenced  by  Stoicism  and  Aristotelianism,  and  had 
by  means  of  Julian  [of  Eclanum]  received  a  bias  to 
Stoic  naturalism." —  Harnack,  Ibid.,  V,  p.  172. 

2  Quarterly  Review,  June,  1910.     Mr.  Bevan  is  in 
error  in   this   paragraph  with   regard  to   Augustine. 
"Louis    Gourdon,    Essai    sur    la    conversion    de    St. 
Augustine,  Paris,  1900,  has  shown  by  an  analysis  of 
Augustine's   writings   immediately   after   his   conver 
sion    [A.  D.  398]   that  the  account  he  gives  in  the 
Confessions  is  premature.     The  crisis  in  the  garden 
marked  a  definitive  conversion  from  his  former  life, 

30 


The  influence  of  Stoicism  upon  early  Chris 
tianity  is  very  interesting.  A  prefect  of  Con 
stantinople,  in  the  reign  of  the  emperor 
Arcadius  [395-408],  weary  of  the  world, 
retired  to  the  solitude  of  the  monastery  of 
Mount  Sinai  and  transmuted  the  Thoughts  of 
Epictetus  into  a  manual  of  devotion  and  dis 
cipline  for  the  monks  of  the  monastery.1 
Hildebert,  bishop  of  Le  Mans,  in  the  twelfth 
century,  composed  a  Stoic  treatise  entitled 
Moralis  philosophia  de  honesto  et  utili,  in  imi 
tation  of  Cicero's  Offices,  in  which,  with  glori 
ous  disregard  of  history,  he  made  Cicero  and 
Seneca  the  interlocutors.  In  the  preface  of 
this  work  2  he  says  that  he  was  led  in  a  dream 
to  endeavor  to  formulate  the  philosophic 
thought  of  antiquity,  and  that  in  the  dream 
he  was  told  that  Cicero  was  the  greatest  moral 
ist  of  the  pagan  world.3  Hildebert  followed 

but  it  was  to  the  Neo-Platonic  spiritualism,  and  only 
a  halfway  stage  towards  Christianity.  The  latter  he 
appears  not  fully  and  radically  to  have  embraced 
until  four  years  more  had  passed." — William  James, 
The  varieties  of  religious  experience,  p.  171  note. 

1  Zanta,  La  renaissance  du  stoicisme  au  XV I e  siecle, 
Paris,  1914,  pp.  124-28. 

2  In  Migne,  Patrolog.  Lat.,  vol.  171,  cols.  1003-51. 

3  Moralium  dogma  philosophorum  per  multa  disper- 
sum  volumina  contrahere  meditabar  repente  somnus 
obrepsit,  statumque,  ut  fit,  solo  animi  augurio  primum 
ilium  esse  Latinae  eloquentiae  auctorem  Tullium  mihi 
innotuit;  post  quern  ille  moralitatis  eruditior  elegan- 
tissimus  Seneca,  cum  quibusdam  aliis. 

For  further  on  this  interesting  treatise  see  Zanta, 
loc.  cit.,  p.  127,  and  Picavet,  Histoire  comparee  des 
philosophies  medievales,  Paris,  1907,  ch.  vii. 

31 


Cicero's  division  of  the  subject  rigidly.  So, 
too,  John  of  Salisbury,  in  the  same  century, 
in  his  Policraticus,  treated  the  problem  of 
providence  after  the  Stoic  manner. 

Erasmus,  Calvin,  and  Zwingli  admired 
Seneca  more  than  any  other  ancient  writer. 
Epictetus  was  the  admiration  of  Montaigne, 
and  a  famous  hero  of  protestantism  in  the  six 
teenth  century  declared  that  the  world  could 
well  get  along  without  any  books  except  the 
Bible,  Seneca,  and  Epictetus.  Between  the 
inevitability  of  Stoicism  and  the  determin 
ism  —  or,  to  put  it  theologically,  the  predes 
tination  —  of  Calvinism,  there  seems  to  have 
been  a  certain  sympathy.1 

But  Stoicism  has  appealed  to  others  besides 
Renaissance  pagans  and  Calvinist  theologians. 
Sir  Thomas  Brown  and  Spinoza  show  its  in 
fluence.  What  Aubrey  de  Vere  has  finely 
called 

"The  soul's  marmoreal  calmness" 
appealed  to   Wordsworth,  too.     Walt  Whit 
man  is  saturated  with  Stoicism.     John  Ad- 
dington  Symonds  wrote: 

"  In  these  difficulties  I  fall  back  on  a  kind  of  stoical 
mysticism  —  on  the  prayer  of  Cleanthes  (which  is 
graven  on  his  tomb),  the  proem  of  Goethe's  'Gott  und 
die  Welt,'  the  phrase  of  Faust, 

'Entbehren  sollst  du,  sollst  entbehren,' 
the  almost  brutal  optimism  of  Walt  Whitman's 
'  I  cry  to  the  cosmos,  Though  thou  slay  me,  yet  will 
I  trust  in  thee.' 

^ee  Mr.  Bevan's  development  of  this  idea  in 
Quarterly  Review,  June,  1910,  p.  571. 

32 


Can  a  religion  be  constructed  out  of  these  elements? 
Not  a  tangible  one,  perhaps;  nothing  communicable 
to  another's  heart.  But  a  religious  mood  of  mind 
may  be  engendered  sufficient  for  the  purpose  of  living 
not  ignobly." 

The  greatest  of  the  world's  philosophies  yet 
are  less  "broken  lights"  than  iridescent  parts 
of  that  "dome  of  many-colored  glass"  which 
"stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity."  Ten 
nyson  makes  Ulysses  say  that  he  is  a  part  of 
all  he  meets.  But  we  are  more  than  that. 
We  are  part  of  all  who  have  gone  before,  and 
lived  and  thought  before  us.  The  "thought 
less  drift  of  the  deciduous  years"  may  cover 
the  individual.  But  really  great  thoughts 
rarely  perish  utterly.  It  is  as  Goethe  has 
written  — 

"Heard  are  the  voices, 
Heard  are  the  sages, 
The  worlds  and  the  ages." 

Of  all  the  philosophic  writings  which  have 
survived  from  antiquity  I  think  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius 
hold  the  palm  for  popularity  in  modern  times. 
Epictetus  is  his  only  rival.  Plato  is  unto  the 
Platonists;  Aristotle  unto  the  Aristotelians; 
Plotinus  unto  the  Neo-Platonists;  Lucretius 
unto  —  not  the  pessimists,  but  clear  and 
rugged  thinkers  who  are  not  afraid.1  In  the 

1 "  Is  pessimism  necessarily  the  sign  of  decay,  of 
failure,  of  exhausted  and  weakened  instincts?  [Is 
there  not]  an  intellectual  predilection  for  what  is 
hard,  awful,  evil,  problematical?" — Nietzsche,  Birth 
of  Tragedy,  p.  2. 

33 


Roman  world  of  the  end  of  the  second  century 
the  two  chief  powers  making  for  righteous 
ness  were  Stoicism  and  Christianity.  Fortu 
nately  for  the  enduring  fame  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  as  a  philosopher  he  lived  in  an  age 
of  transition  when  Stoicism  had  freed  itself 
from  its  earlier  almost  adamantine  hardness, 
without  losing  its  primitive  ruggedness  of 
character,  and  had  imbibed  some  of  the  ethe 
real  softness  of  Neo-Platonism,  and  perhaps 
of  Christianity,  too.1  It  is  this  transitional 
nature  of  Aurelius'  thought  which  makes  him 
a  connecting  link  between  ancient  pagan  Stoic 
philosophy  and  Christianity,  and  gives  his 
Meditations  such  a  remarkable  popularity 
among  serious-minded  men  even  to-day.  The 
charm  which  this  unique  soliloquy,  originally 
written  for  no  eyes  save  those  of  the  author, 
has  for  men  who  live  for 

"The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land, 
The  consecration  and  the  poet's  dream," 

is  a  very  wonderful  one.  It  is  said  of  Leo 
XIII.  that  when  he  was  dying  and  his  mind 
wandered,  the  watchers  around  his  bed  heard 
him  repeat  over  and  over  again  the  golden 

1 "  Marcus  Aurelius  has  traveled  far  from  the  Cynic 
and  earlier  Stoic  conception  of  man  as  a  self-sufficing 
unit,  without  quite  attaining  the  Christian  ideal, 
which  declares  that  he  can  only  find  his  higher  self 
in  and  through  the  development  of  the  higher  self  in 
others." — Alston,  Christianity  and  Stoicism  in  the 
second  century,  p.  9. 

34 


sentences  of  the  Meditations.  "It  is  one  in 
stance  out  of  many  of  the  persistent  influence 
of  Stoicism  and  its  undiminished  fascination 
for  the  nobleminded  of  any  creed,  or  no  creed, 
in  almost  every  age  or  country  of  the  civilized 
world."  1  Spedding  called  Edward  Fitzgerald 
"the  prince  of  quietists,"  and  said  that  "his 
tranquility  was  like  a  pirated  copy  of  the 
peace  of  God."  Fitzgerald  was  not  a  pro 
fessed  Stoic;  neither  was  this  mediaeval  poet 
of  ours.  But  each  leans  hard  upon  the  Stoic 
philosophy,  nevertheless,  and  the  tranquility 
of  each  has  a  striking  resemblance  to  that  of 
the  Stoics. 

Whoever  our  author  was,  he  was  one  of 
those  men  not  brave  enough  outwardly  to  defy 
the  church's  authority;  yet  true  sufficiently  to 
himself  at  least  to  tend  the  flame  of  the  light 
within  his  own  soul.  Thereby  he  gained  a 
spiritual  tranquility  within  which  neutralized 
the  narcotic  effect  of  outward  compromise  and 
conformity.  While  his  poem  is  partly  tinc 
tured  with  the  lofty  scorn  of  Lucretius,  and 
much  with  the  tonic  quality  of  the  Stoic  phil 
osophy  and  the  spirit  of  the  Aristotelian  man 
of  inquiring  mind,  yet  it  is  also  imbued  with 
the  softer  mysticism  of  Neo-Platonism.  But, 
above  all,  the  poem  is  pervaded  with  a  ration 
alism,  a  scientific  quality  of  mind,  rare  almost 
to  the  point  of  non-existence  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  Whoever  the  author  was  he  looked  at 

'Bevan,  loc.  cit.,  p.  563. 
35 


things  with  level  eyes  and  in  the  calm  light 
of  reason.  He  may  have  outwardly  con 
formed  to  the  precepts  of  Holy  Church,  but 
inwardly  he  was  a  free  spirit.  To  him 

"Stone  walls  did  not  a  prison  make, 
Nor  iron  bars  a  cage." 

The  authority  of  the  church  had  no  binding 
force  upon  his  imagination  or  meditation.1 

He  was  a  pure  individualist.  The  mass- 
weight  of  mankind  had  no  force  for  him.  To 
him  the  religion  of  the  time  was  a  vulgar 
superstition.  For  him  religion  had  to  be,  not 
a  mass  of  credulous  beliefs,  but  a  philosophy. 
He  had  that  antiseptic  quality  of  mind  which 
refused  to  accept  a  teaching  which  violated 
his  intelligence  and  his  reason.  He  refused 
to  believe  doctrines  totally  incapable  of 
proof.  He  knew  that  instinct  proves  nothing, 
or  everything,  as  one  chooses,  and  that  the 
argument  derived  from  it  is  a  fallacy. 

But  I  must  bring  this  introduction,  already 
too  long,  to  an  end.  Instead  of  being  a  porch 
through  which  the  reader  might  enter  into  the 
poem,  I  fear  that  I  have  made  it  a  peristyle 
instead.  In  the  usual  acceptation  of  the  word, 
perhaps,  this  poem  may  hardly  be  called  a 
translation.  While  I  have  often  translated 

1 "  Learning  alters  us  ...  But  at  the  bottom  of 
our  souls  .  .  .  there  is  certainly  something  unteach- 
able,  a  granite  of  spiritual  fate,  of  predetermined 
decision  and  answer  to  predetermined,  chosen  ques 
tions." —  Nietzsche,  Beyond  Good  and  Evil,  p.  181. 

36 


literally,  I  have  not  infrequently  paraphrased 
the  thought.  The  Latin  language  was  capable 
of  a  density,  a  terseness  of  expression,  which 
the  English  tongue  rarely  possesses  in  the 
same  degree;  on  the  other  hand,  a  mediaeval 
writer  was  usually  inclined  to  be  turgid.  This 
double  characteristic  of  the  original  has  some 
times  led  me  to  expansion,  sometimes  to  con 
traction  of  the  thought.  There  are  a  few 
stanzas  which  have  no  absolute  equivalent  in 
the  original ;  these  are  rather  summings  up  of 
the  author's  feelings  than  literal  reproduc 
tions  of  his  language.  In  no  case  can  they  be 
considered  as  foreign  to  his  mind.  For  they 
are  in  entire  harmony  with  other  liberal 
thought  of  the  time.  Sir  Rennel  Rodd,  in  his 
recently  published  delightful  translations 
from  the  Greek  anthology,1  has  written:  "Of 
the  quality  of  verse  translation  there  are  many 
tests:  the  closeness  with  which  the  intention 
and  atmosphere  of  the  original  has  been  main 
tained;  the  absence  of  extraneous  additions; 
the  omission  of  no  essential  feature;  and  the 
interpretation,  by  such  equivalent  as  most  ade 
quately  corresponds,  of  individualities  of  style 
and  assonances  of  language.  But  not  the 
least  essential  justification  of  poetical  trans 
lation  is  that  the  version  shall  constitute  a 
poem  on  its  own  account." 

I  plead  guilty  to  my  critics,  of  sins  both  of 
omission  and  of  commission,   if  this  be  the 

*Love,  Worship,  and  Death,  London,  1916. 
37 


canon  law  of  the  translator ;  for  no  one  knows 
better  than  I  how  far  I  have  fallen  short  of 
the  ideals  here  expressed.  But  one  hope  I 
still  cherish,  namely,  that  my  poem  constitutes 
a  poem  in  form,  in  subject,  and  in  spirit  — 
that  it  is  a  poem  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 

The  metre  of  the  original,  as  said  before, 
is  hexameter.  But  hexameter,  even  when 
written  by  a  master  in  English,  fails  of  the 
effect  its  usage  possesses  in  the  classic  tongue. 
Mr.  W.  H.  Mallock  some  years  ago  gave  to  the 
world  of  the  few  who  were  fortunate  enough 
to  discover  it  a  translation  of  parts  of  Lucre 
tius  rendered  into  the  verse-form  of  Fitz 
gerald's  Rubaiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam.^  The 
success  of  his  experiment  has  emboldened  me 
to  court  failure  by  trying  to  use  the  same  verse 
structure  for  this  poem.  I  realize  how  rash 
and  perhaps  impossible  a  thing  it  is  which 
I  have  endeavored  to  do. 

Benson,  in  his  Life  of  Edward  Fitzgerald, 
has  said:  "There  is  a  certain  priestly  mood 
which  falls  upon  those  in  whom  the  need  for 
creating  what  is  beautiful  is  very  imperious." 
This  study  has  been  a  labor  of  love  with  me 
for  several  years.  In  order  to  understand  and 
to  feel  the  spirit  of  the  theme  I  have  atten- 


1  W.  H.  Mallock,  Lucretius  on  Life  and  Death,  Lon 
don,  John  Lane,  1900.  Mr.  Paul  E.  More  has  pub 
lished  in  the  Nation  of  November  30,  1916,  six 
stanzas,  in  Fitzgerald's  verse  form,  of  a  translation  of 
the  Bhagavadgita. 

38 


lively  read  the  history  of  the  most  important 
forerunners  and  rivals  of  Christianity,  and  — 
may  I  say  it  without  pretentiousness? — some 
gleams  of  the  piercing  spiritual  beauty  of 
those  ancient  pagan  cults  seem  to  have  illu 
minated  the  page  as  I  have  written.  Two 
lines,  which  every  reader  will  recognize,  have 
been  borrowed  directly  from  Matthew  Arnold 
and  Tennyson.  I  have  used  them  because 
they  quite  exactly  express  the  sense  of  the 
Latin  lines,  while  the  beauty  of  their  form 
imparts  a  charm  to  "  the  argument  of  mine 
afflicted  stile." 

In  the  copious  notes  which  are  appended 
to  the  text  of  the  poem,  I  have  endeavored  to 
trace  back  every  line  and  every  allusion  to 
what  I  believe  to  have  been  the  original  source 
of  the  poet's  thought,  whether  in  mediaeval  or 
ancient  literature,  or  in  the  Bible. 


39 


PROEM 

Where  the  stately  poplars  quiver 

In  the  sinuous  Seine  river, 

Winding  slow  through  poppied  ridges, 

Underneath  old  Paris'  bridges  — 

'T  is  of  mediaeval  time 

This  my  rhyme  — 

Dwelt  a  youth  of  clerkly  ways 

Delving  days, 
And  many  a  weary  night 
By  the  taper's  flickering  light 

Over  monkish  Latin  lore, 

Volumes  hoar. 

Dry  and  musty  was  the  quaint  old 
Knowledge  saint-told, 
Stored  within  the  books  unscanned 

'Neath  his  hand. 
He  was  weary  of  the  query 

Of  the  schoolmen's  mind; 
And  his  thought  bent  in  its  yearning 
To  the  learning 

Of  the  world  long  years  behind, 
For  his  brain  seethed  with  the  dreaming 

And  the  teeming 
Thoughts  which  faster,  vaster, 

From  the  master 
Minds  of  eld  unto  him  came. 


41 


THE  POEM 

It  came,  what  time  I  dwelt  in  fair  Lutece, 
In  student  fellowship  —  0  cloistered  place 
Of  high  renown  and  sweet  illusionments, 
Sorbonne,  how  dear  and  beautiful  thy  face. 


II 

A  voice  came  crying  to  me  on  the  wind: 
"Shut  to  thy  books,  nor  suffer  thou  thy  mind 

To  be  distraught  by  vain  philosophers, 
For  they  be  all  blind  leaders  of  the  blind. 

Ill 

"All  vision  has  become  a  book  that 's  sealed 
To  those  who  ever  plough  that  sterile  field. 

Write  thou  this  vision,  for  in  days  to  come 
Thy  spirit's  fruit  an  hundred  fold  shall  yield." 

IV 

The  wind  that  through  the  keyhole  blew  said:  "Lo, 
Thy  teachers  have  no  wisdom  to  bestow; 

Those  hooded  monks  tell  all  their  thoughts  like  beads." 
Untouched  the  door  sprang  wide  and  bade  me  "Go." 

43 


V 

The  time  of  any  man  is  little  space 
Methinks;   his  spot  of  sojourn  but  a  place 

Apart,  and  history  an  ocean  marge 
Whence  mightiest  waves  retreat  without  a  trace. 

VI 

Days,  seasons,  places,  heroes  and  events 
Fade  and  dissolve,  and  leave  no  lineaments. 

The  granite  piles  of  Carnac  and  the  Sphinx  — 
Tell  me,  0  sage,  whose  are  these  monuments? 

VII 

Beneath  the  weight  of  Egypt's  pyramid 
The  sombre  chambers  of  the  dead  are  hid; 

Vast  galleries  and  funeral  rooms  of  rock  — 
Whose  silence  human  footsteps  never  thrid. 

VIII 

Unconscious  monuments  of  vanished  might 
Frown  from  the  gloom  there  and  the  night  affright; 

Pride,  kingdom,  power  in  every  one  of  those 
Grim  visages  of  carven  diorite. 

IX 

Who  of  those  bones  proprietaries  were? 

Whose  frames  those  ashes  formed?     Canst  thou  aver? 

Or  when  the  persons  of  those  relics  there 
Entered  the  fastness  of  that  sepulchre? 

44 


X 

As  soon  find  Moses'  tomb  on  Beth-peor; 
Tell  me,  what  name,  when  hid,  Achilles  bore; 

Which  of  the  isles  blind  Homer's  birth-place  was; 
What  sang  the  temptress  sirens  from  the  shore. 

XI 

How  futile  is  that  awful  pomp  of  death 
Even  for  a  day  to  stretch  the  vanished  breath! 

The  mystery  of  death  is  doubly  veiled 
Where  Egypt's  hoary  grandeur  slumbereth. 

XII 

Long  lasting  memory,  how  few  do  find; 
Oblivion  scatters  poppy  as  though  blind. 

The  epitaph  of  Hadrian's  horse  survives 
That  purple  Caesar's  fame  among  mankind. 

XIII 

Whether  the  best  of  men  be  known  or  not, 
Or  if  there  be  not  greater  names  forgot 

Than  those  emblazoned  on  the  walls  of  time  — 
This  is  a  riddle  none  can  solve,  I  wot. 

XIV 

Cyrus  and  Alexander,  Caesar  —  three 
Who  held  the  homage  of  the  world  in  fee 

Were  fain  to  part  with  their  own  lives  at  last: 
How  mightier  than  mightiest  are  we? 

45 


XV 

How  many  men  innumerable  —  think!— 
Journeyed  aforetime  to  that  selfsame  brink 

Before  and  since  those  great  ones  trod  the  earth? 
Think  you  that  you  shall  float  while  others  sink? 

XVI 

Sic  transit  gloria  mundi:  those  long  dead 
And  those  late  passed  all  sleep  in  the  same  bed. 

The  years  of  many  generations  blend 
Pope,  peasant,  prince,  when  buried. 

XVII 

The  years  seem  long  when  they  from  us  are  far; 
But  come,  they  vanish  swiftly  as  a  star 

That  rends  the  veil  of  darkness  in  the  night 
Like  flash  of  some  bright  angel's  scimitar. 

XVIII 

The  fame  men  prize  is  oft  oblivion; 
Kings  are  but  shadows  on  a  spectre-throne; 

Sceptre  and  crown  are  baubles  of  an  hour. 
Is  there,  to  human  life,  a  corner-stone? 

XIX 

The  beautiful  is  oft  untimely  gone; 

The  rose  dies  with  the  day  that  bloomed  at  dawn. 

And  yet,  what  difference  to  thee  or  me 
In  the  immensity  of  time  out-drawn? 

46 


XX 

Life  is  an  archway  through  whose  aperture 
Into  illimitable  lands  obscure 

The  endless  files  of  mankind  ceaselessly 
Do  march.  Whence?  Whither?  Why?  Ah,  who  is  sure? 

XXI 

Go,  pace  the  sand  beside  Atlantic's  surge, 
And  see  the  sun  sink  slowly  'neath  the  verge, 

Out  on  the  luminous  horizon  far 
Where  sky  and  watery  waste  together  merge. 

XXII 

So  sinks  the  soul.     But  does  it  rise  once  more 
In  some  new  East?     Upon  some  other  shore? 

Like  amarant,  immortal  in  the  dark, 
Or  kneel  eternally  by  some  barred  door? 

XXIII 

Far  inland  from  the  sea  the  rosy  shell 
Harbors  the  lingering  sound  of  ocean  swell; 

No  still  small  voice  within  my  inmost  heart 
To  me  of  past  or  future  life  doth  tell. 

XXIV 

Man's  life  is  of  man's  life  the  whole,  not  part. 
Eternity  is  long,  life  short.    Thou  art 

A  mere  mote  swimming  in  the  deeps  of  space. 
Men  die,  gods  die,  the  soul  dies  with  the  heart. 

47 


XXV 

What  boots  it  all  at  last  when  we  are  done? 
What  boots  the  day  when  sunken  is  the  sun? 

What  then  remains  of  man's  much  vaunted  power, 
When  all  the  water  in  the  glass  is  run? 

XXVI 

The  world's  face  has  grown  grey  in  quest  of  truth. 
More  time  has  been  consumed  than  Rome,  in  sooth, 

To  conquer  and  to  rule  the  world  required; 
And  still  the  riddle  riddles  age  and  youth. 

XXVII 

What  was  I  ere  my  life  began?     None  knows. 
Where  was  I?    Was  I  any  where?    Where  goes 
The  soul  at  death?    Is  birth  a  waking  dream 
And  death  a  swoon?     Alas,  the  riddle  grows. 

XXVIII 

No  one  can  answer  where  or  whither,  what 
Or  how  or  why.    We  are  —  and  then  are  not. 

The  world's  wheel  like  a  potter's  disk  revolves, 
Moulding  our  clay  into  some  jar  or  pot, 

XXIX 

Or  vase,  or  thick  flat  plate,  or  bowl  — 
Mankind  is  fashioned  as  the  seasons  roll: 

Some  clean  and  bright  and  shining  chalices, 
Some  vessels  of  dishonour  without  soul. 


XXX 

Who  is  the  masterful  Artificer? 

Where  is  the  pit  from  which  we  digged  were, 

That  He  might  mould  us  from  that  neutral  clay? 
Did  life  on  ocean's  fertile  floor  first  stir? 


XXXI 

Life  's  an  uncharted  sea,  whose  shore 
All  we,  in  vain,  from  East  to  West  explore, 
Pacing  a  few  stades  off  in  yearly  course: 
Of  the  great  sea  of  life  we  know  no  more. 

XXXII 

What  of  that  unknown  and  mysterious  tract 
Of  life  environing  material  fact? 

Where  God  forever  walks  across  the  deep? 
Blind,  blind  are  we,  each  in  his  puny  act 

XXXIII 

Absorbed.    What  will  it  profit  us,  the  world 
With  all  its  sordid  goods  to  have  unfurled, 

And  forfeit  of  life's  richest  birthright  make? 
To  dig  for  dross  where  full  life  lies  impearled? 

XXXIV 

Our  years  are  but  an  interval,  of  long 

Or  shorter  time,  which  some  men  spend  in  wrong, 

And  some  in  listlessness,  and  some  for  wealth: 
The  wise  alone  seek  truth  and  art  and  song. 

49 


XXXV 

I  've  read  somewhere  that  Gregory  the  Great  — 
Or  was  it  Augustine? —  deplored  the  fate 

(Because,  forsooth,  the  heathen  all  are  damned) 
That  Trajan  barred  from  the  celestial  gate. 

XXXVI 

Dear  God!     Those  ancient  faiths  once  suckled  souls 
As  great  as  those  the  Lateran  controls. 

Aye,  greater.    Deep  of  stream  those  spirits  were: 
We  puny  creatures  cling  unto  the  shoals, 


XXXVII 

Afraid  to  launch  out  to  the  deeps  which  call 
Because  the  terrors  of  the  church  appall, 

By  self -authoritative  priests  imposed; 
The  bishops  have  made  cowards  of  us  all. 

XXXVIII 

Deaf  with  mortality's  loud-clanking  chain, 
They  only  rouse  my  fierce  wrath  and  disdain, 

With  saints'  excess-of-good-works,  or  with  gifts, 
Who  commerce  make  of  souls,  heaven  to  attain. 


XXXIX 

Alas,  that  mankind,  searching  for  the  right, 
Scarce  in  the  wide  world  finds  a  glimmering  light. 
Shame  on  those  shameless  ones  who  summon  Hell 
Out  of  the  gulf  of  shadows  and  of  night. 

50 


XL 

Life  is  a  struggle  in  the  dark  to  hosts 
Of  men,  who  fight  mere  shadows  and  the  ghosts 

Of  their  imaginations.    They  are  like 
Scared  sailors  wrecked  upon  barbarian  coasts. 

XLI 

There  is  an  inward  sky  within  the  mind 
Wider  than  measurement  of  sense  defined, 

Whose  stars  are  thoughts  transcending  far  and  free 
The  grovelling  mysteries  of  priestly  kind. 

XLII 

The  open  mind  is  born  of  God,  but  these 
Who  vaunt  the  power  of  ghostly  mysteries 

To  bind  and  loose  and  thrall  the  mind,  are  false 
Hierophants  of  fabled  destinies. 

******* 

XLIII 

T  is  strange  to  me,  as  here  I  write,  to  think 
That  most  among  my  friends — par  Dieu! — would  shrink 

From  me  as  heretic,  if  they  but  knew, 
And  deem  my  soul  as  vile  as  this  black  ink. 

XLIV 

They  each  and  all  belong  to  Holy  Church. 
My  touch  is  foul  and  would  their  garments  smirch, 

Did  they  but  know.  .  .  .    I  wonder:  Are  they  right? 
//  they  are  right  my  soul  is  in  the  lurch. 

51 


XLV 

Well,  souls  of  most  men  narrow  houses  are; 
Thin  tenements  whose  mud  walls  bear  the  scar 
Of  sordid,  wretched,  noisome  lives  that  crawl 
Thereon  like  flies.     My  soul  would  be  a  star. 

XLVI 

Man's  life  is  from  man's  world  a  thing  apart. 
Do  you  the  riddle  guess?     Within  his  heart 

Abides  his  own  real  life.    Abroad,  he  grants 
The  world's  demands,  with  superficial  art. 

XLVII 

The  tide  of  time  is  at  the  ebb,  and  slack; 
Stagnant  is  thought;  the  taste  of  life  is  brack. 

The  prayer  of  Samson  was  for  light  —  my  cry: 
"Would  that  Time's  ancient  tide  were  surging  back." 

XLVIII 

As  soon  expect  to  sow  the  sea  with  oats, 
Or  sail  the  ripened  fields  in  keeled  boats, 

Find  fish  on  land  or  camels  in  the  stars, 
Round  to  be  square,  kids  lambs,  that  iron  floats. 

XLIX 

Why  does  the  church  harass  a  driven  leaf? 
Or  feed  men  thorns  when  corn  is  in  the  sheaf? 

Give  stones  for  bread  and  water  for  red  wine? 
The  way  to  God  is  long  and  life  is  brief. 

52 


L 

Proverbs  of  ashes,  pious  words  of  old, 
Dark  sayings  of  the  fathers  slimed  with  mould, 

Lives  of  saints,  silly  miracles  and  cant 
Daily  to  us  for  nourishment  are  doled. 

LI 

Olympus'  gods,  thou  Rome,  hast  seen  retire; 
Zeus  and  Adonis  like  a  dream  expire; 
Glory  depart  from  Ida;   Dian's  fane 
In  ruin  fall,  and  perish  Vesta's  fire; 

LII 

The  high  gods  die  like  butterflies  in  frost; 
The  glorious  lore  of  Greece  for  ages  lost. 

What  wilt  thou  say  before  the  bar  of  God? 
0  Christian  Rome,  dear  to  mankind  thy  cost. 

LIII 

Charlatan  and  masquer!     Sorceress! 
Base  trickster  of  humanity's  distress! 

Avenging  Time  shall  yet  take  toll  of  thee, 
And  shrink  thy  terrors  into  nothingness. 

LIV 

Age  after  age's  cumulated  wrong 

Like  a  dread  storm  on  thee  shall  break  ere  long. 

Orbis  ecclesiarum  caput  —  Rome, 
Thou  shalt  yet  be  like  some  long  vanished  song. 

53 


LV 

Temples  and  churches  close  beside  the  mart, 
Rondured  by  exercise  of  every  art  — 

Groined  arches,  chancels,  painted  glass,  attest 
The  yearning  hunger  of  the  human  heart. 

LVI 

Yet  will  I  not  their  god  adore  until 
The  sky  looks  down  on  ruined  wall  and  sill, 
On  empty  courts  and  grey  cathedral  aisles  — 
Ecclesia  dum  fuerit  —  Nihil. 

LVII 

When  desolation  strikes  their  thresholds  bare, 
And  wild  birds  lodge  in  broken  chapiter, 

When  wolves  howl  in  the  hollow  vaults  below  — 
When  Holy  Church  is  dead,  I  shall  go  there. 

******* 

LVIH 

Men's  thoughts  alternate,  moon-like  wax  and  wane; 
Life  swims  in  circles;  heart-tides,  like  the  main, 

Though  wandered  far  in  split  and  tortuous  streams, 
Shoreward  recurrent  yet  shall  turn  again. 

LIX 

Basil  and  Julian  be  both  now  dead; 
Hypatia  and  Cyrillus  buried; 

The  Golden-Mouthed  and  Diocletian  — 
Victor  and  vanquished  in  the  selfsame  bed. 

54 


LX 

Poor  work  it  is  to  jeer  a  fallen  foe. 
The  pagan  seers  have  vanished  long  ago 

Into  the  arms  of  that  great  silence  which 
Forbids  us  all  its  mysteries  to  know. 

LXI 

Are  we  more  certain  of  the  soul  than  they? 
Is  bishop  better  than  a  flamen?     Say 

Whether  the  quality  of  life  be  raised, 
Or  if  the  world  be  happier  to-day. 

LXII 

For  me  Aurelius'  austere  atmosphere 
Breathes  the  idea  of  deity  more  clear 
Than  sensuous  emotion,  mummery, 
Or  gorgeous  ritual  to  church  so  dear. 

LXIII 

Religion  was  the  worship  of  the  soul 
With  him;  entire  surrender  to  control 

By  what  man's  highest  reason  can  divine: 
"He  saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it  whole." 

LXIV 

He  built  religion  on  a  noble  scheme 
Of  perfect  consecration  and  the  dream; 

Philosophy  and  poetry  he  loved: 
The  magic  and  the  beauty  of  the  theme 

55 


LXV 

Are  lost  with  us  to-day,  who  whine  our  plaints, 
Prayers,  orisons,  petitions,  to  the  saints 

More  than  to  God,  and  reverence  their  bones, 
And  counterfeit  their  countenance  with  paints. 

LXVI 

Procul  prof  anil  .  .  .    God  is  spirit,  saith 
The  Book,  in  spirit  worshipt  and  in  faith, 

Not  in  material  guise,  but  spirit  pure: 
So  was  He  worshipt  when  the  world  was  rathe. 

LXVII 

Plato,  the  Stagirite  and  Socrates, 
Zeno,  Lucretius,  Epicurus  —  these 

Darkened  not  counsel  with  scholastic  wit, 
And  shame  us  petty  moderns  to  our  knees. 

LXVIII 

Those  ancient  pagan  cults,  behind  the  veil 
Of  figure,  symbol,  allegory,  tale  — 

How  pregnant  they  with  beautiful  surprise! 
Ruddy,  like  sunrise  on  a  fisher's  sail. 

LXIX 

For  myths  are  intimations  deep  and  vast 
(Born  of  the  race's  immemorial  past, 

Still  with  the  dawn-dreams  of  creation  drenched) 
That  earliest  man  the  thought  of  God  held  fast. 

56 


LXX 

Wine  from  those  altars  old  give  me  to  drain; 
Forget  religious  tyranny,  the  stain 

Of  bitter  creeds  and  darkened  mysteries, 
And  dream  the  grey  earth  is  renewed  again; 

LXXI 

When  gods  called  unto  gods  in  high  abodes; 
Muse  answered  muse  in  odes  and  palinodes. 
Religion  then  was  life  and  art  and  song, 
And  not  a  thing  of  creeds  and  priestly  codes. 

LXXII 

How  singular  and  strange  the  heart  of  man! 
Apt  both  to  lag  behind  or  lead  the  van; 

Hugging  false  gods  .  .  .  and  then,  Prometheus-like, 
Snatching  the  fire  from  heaven  to  fan. 

LXXIII 

Sometimes  at  sunset,  gazing  at  the  cloud, 
Enrapt,  I  seem  to  feel  that  God  has  bowed 

And  come  to  earth  to  walk  and  talk  with  me, 
And  with  a  holy  flame  I  seem  endowed. 

LXXIV 

That  orderly  procession  of  the  sky, 
Marching  in  serried  columns  there  on  high 

Brings  me  the  sense  of  God  pervading  all 
Not  in  the  sacramental  mystery. 

57 


LXXV 

I  can  hold  glad  communion  with  the  stars. 
In  life's  fierce  turmoil  and  the  world's  rude  jars 

How  good  to  know  that  realm  inviolate 
Which  no  priest  enters  and  no  dogma  mars. 

LXXVI 

Within  his  own  soul  each  one  finds  his  creed, 
Springing  responsive  to  his  spirit's  need; 

Or  golden  grain  or  chaff  before  the  wind, 
Religion  is  of  man's  own  heart  the  seed: 


LXXVII 

Hopes,  aspirations,  faintings  sore, 
Triumphs,  defeats,  wild  strivings  evermore, 

Born  of  the  eager  hunger  after  God 
In  mankind  Edenless  outside  the  door. 


LXXVIII 

The  Iliad  of  the  Soul  were  nobler  tale 
Than  Troy's  far  flaming  ramparts,  or  the  sail 

That  bore  Ulysses  to  the  Western  Sea. 
Not  like  unstable  water,  they  prevail 

LXXIX 

Who  bind  their  hearts  to  God's  own  chariot  wheel, 
Who  march  the  planetary  road,  and  steal 
The  alchemy  of  starlight  and  of  sun  — 
On  these  alone  God  sets  his  crimson  seal. 

58 


LXXX 

"There  is  no  wealth  but  life."    Resolve  to  be 
Attuned  to  its  sublime  and  serious  key; 

To  wrest  from  out  the  dark  of  here  and  now 
The  great,  the  good,  the  true  philosophy. 

LXXXI 

Not  length  of  life,  but  clean,  deep  life  avails. 
There  is  no  power  whenso  the  impulse  fails. 

Corn  grows  of  God's  good  bounty,  but  for  bread 
Thou  needs  must  beat  the  golden  grain  with  flails. 

LXXXII 

Eternity  is  long,  life  short.    The  while 
Thou  liv'st  a  passing  shadow  on  the  dial, 
Yet  worth  eternity's  whole  self  to  thee. 
Beware!     It  may  be  all  thy  chance  of  trial. 

LXXXIII 

True  piety  is  not  with  measured  pace, 
With  outstretched  hands  and  melancholy  face 

To  kneel  before  dead  altars  built  with  hands, 
And  to  the  lifted  Host  thy  soul  abase. 

LXXXIV 

To  contemplate  the  world  with  open  mind; 
To  do  that  duty  which  we  nearest  find  — 

Philosophy  and  creed  this  is  to  men 
By  sterile  teachings  not  yet  made  purblind. 

59 


LXXXV 

The  poet  word  by  word  upbuilds  his  line; 
By  unseen  stages  climbs  the  towering  pine; 

With  steadfast  purpose,  painfully  and  slow, 
Thou  needs  must  form  that  character  of  thine. 


LXXXVI 

"To  seek,  to  strive,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield," 
To  clear  the  sight  of  those  whose  eyes  are  sealed, 

This  righteousness  alone  exalteth  man; 
Not  good  imputed,  of  Elysian  Field 

LXXXVII 

Dreaming,  with  hope  of  recompense  therefor, 
Or  paltry  fear  lest  shut  may  be  the  door. 

Virtue,  how  frail  it  is,  when  men  there  be 
Who  traffic  even  with  the  Conqueror. 

LXXXVIII 

Death  is  the  ultimate  keen  edge  of  things; 
Death  is  the  highway  of  the  King  of  Kings. 

He  weeps  who  walks  along  that  road  with  dread; 
He  who  that  highway  walks  intrepid,  sings. 

LXXXIX 

And  was  it  not  to  set  forth  this  high  claim 
That  saint  and  martyr,  poet,  prophet  came? 

Some  to  be  crowned  with  laurel  wreath,  and  some 
To  sanctify  their  message  in  the  flame. 

60 


xc 

When  roars  the  lion,  who  may  lie  asleep? 

Not  the  awed  shepherd  crouched  among  his  sheep. 

Whether  in  still  small  voice  or  trumpet  blast, 
When  God  hath  spoken  who  dare  silence  keep? 

XCI 

High  poetry,  high  art,  high  truth,  high  God, 
Are  reached  by  paths  the  crowd  has  never  trod, 

That  ignorantly  gropes  and  stumbles  on, 
To  all  high  aspiration  but  a  clod. 

XCII 

As  far  as  knowledge  and  clear  reason  show, 
By  their  austere  direction  I  will  go; 

And  when,  at  utmost  edge  of  thought  they  fail, 
Like  Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  in  the  glow 

XCIII 

Of  far-off  vision  and  of  dim  surmise, 
To  inner  voices  listing  of  surprise, 

I  still  will  climb,  till  o'er  some  summit  far 
The  rose  of  God's  own  wondrous  dawn  shall  rise. 


61 


They  are  conquered,  they  break,  they  are  stricken, 
Whose  magic  made  the  whole  world  pale; 

They  are  dust  that  shall  rise  not  nor  quicken, 
Though  the  world  for  their  death's  sake  wail. 

SWINBURNE,  The  Last  Oracle  [A.D.  361]. 


Schone  Welt,  wo  bist  Du?     Kehre  wieder 

Holdes  Bliithenalter  der  Natur. 
Ach,  nur  in  dem  Feenland  der  Lieder 

Lebt  noch  deine  fabelhafte  Spur. 
Ausgestorben  trauert  das  Gefilde, 

Keine  Gottheit  zeigt  sich  meinem  Blick; 
Ach,  von  jenem  lebenswarmen  Bilde 

Blieb  der  Schatten  nur  zuriick. 

GOETHE. 


63 


NOTES 

STANZA   II. 

Pagina  claudere,  jamque  retexere  desine  multa. 
Claudere  pagina,  denique  carmina  nostra,  audite. 
Cf.  Marcus  Aurelius  I,  16:  "Farewell,  my  books." 
We  find  the  same  thought  as  to  the  futility  of  mere 
erudition  in  Omar  Khayyam,'. 

Myself  when  young  did  eagerly  frequent 
Doctor  and  saint,  and  heard  great  argument 

About  it  and  about:  but  evermore 
Came  out  by  the  same  door  as  in  I  went. 
"Blind  leaders  of  the  blind"  comes  from  Matt.  xv.  14. 

STANZA  IIL 

Cf.  Isaiah  xxix.  11;  Daniel  viii.  26 ;  Habakkukii.2. 

STANZA  v. 

Mutat  enim  mundi  naturam  totius  aetas 
Ex  alioque  alius  status  excipere  omnia  debet, 
Nee  manet  ulla  sui  similis  res.     Omnia  migrant. 
Nihil  constat,  quoniam  minui  rem  quamque  videmus, 
Et  quasi  longinquo  fluere  omnia  cernimus  aevo. 
For  time  changes  the  nature  of  the  whole  world, 
and  one  condition  of  things  after  another  must  suc 
ceed  all  things,  nor  does  anything  abide  like  itself. 
We  see  all  things  change.     Nothing  lasts.     We  per 
ceive  that  everything  ebbs,  as  it  were,  by  reason  of 
years. 

This  closely  reflects  the  thought  of  Marcus  Aurelius: 
The  time  of  a  man's  life  is  as  a  point,  the  substance 
of  it  ever  flowing  —  to  be  brief,  as  a  dream  or  as 
smoke,  so  are  all  that  belong  to  the  soul.  The  time, 
therefore,  that  any  man  doth  live  is  but  a  little,  and 
the  place  where  he  liveth  is  but  a  very  little  corner 
of  the  earth;  and  the  greatest  fame  that  can  remain 
of  a  man  after  his  death,  even  that  is  but  a  little. — 
Casaubon's  translation. 

65 


STANZA  VI. 

Inrevocabilis  abstulerit  jam  praeterita  a;tas, 
Denique  ab  ignibus  ad  gelidas  iter  usque  pruinas 
Finitum  est,  retroque  pari  ratione  remensum  est; 
Augescunt  aliae  gentes,  aliae  minuuntur, 
Inque  brevi  spatio  mutantur  saecla  animantum, 
Et  quasi  cursores  vits  lampada  primordia  posse. 
Denique  non  monimenta  virum  dilapsa  videmus 
Quaerere  proporro  sibi  sene  senescere  credas? 

Time  now  gone  by  has  irrevocably  passed.  From 
summer  fires  to  chill  frost  a  definite  path  is  traced 
out,  and  in  like  manner  is  again  traveled  back.  Some 
nations  wax,  others  wane,  and  in  a  brief  space  things 
are  changed  and,  like  runners,  hand  over  the  lamp  of 
life.  See  we  not  the  monuments  of  men,  fallen  to 
ruin,  ask  whether  you  would  believe  that  they  could 
decay  with  years? 

STANZA  VII. 

Was  the  poet  thinking  of  the  striking  verse  in  Isaiah 
xiv.  18?:  "All  the  kings  of  the  nations,  all  of  them, 
sleep  in  glory,  every  one  in  his  own  house." 

Or  Job  iii.  14:  "...  at  rest  with  kings  and  coun 
cillors  of  the  earth,  who  built  for  themselves  pyra 
mids." 

There  seems  also  to  be  some  reflection  of  Vergil: 
Ibant  obscuri  sola  sub  nocte  per  umbram 
Perque  domos  Ditis  vacuas  et  inania  regna. 

JEneid  VI.  268. 

Along  the  illimitable  shade 
Darkling  and  lone  their  way  they  made, 
Through  the  vast  kingdom  of  the  dead, 
An  empty  void,  though  tenanted. 

Conington's  translation. 

STANZA  VIII. 

It  is  curious  to  see  how  a  French  poet  of  the  seven 
teenth  century,  Pierre  Le  Moyne,  in  his  now  forgotten 
poem  on  Saint  Louis  in  Egypt  [1653],  has  visualized 
the  heart  of  the  pyramids  in  much  the  same  way. 

66 


Sous  les  pieds  de  ces  monts  tallies  et  suspendus, 
II  s'etend  des  pays  tenebreux  et  perdus, 
Des  deserts  spacieux,  des  solitudes  sombres, 
Faites  pour  le  sejour  des  morts  et  de  leurs  ombres. 
La  sont  les  corps  des  rois  et  les  corps  des  sultans 
Diversement  ranges  selon  1'ordre  des  temps, 
Les  uns  sont  enchasses  dans  decreuses  images 
A  qui  1'art  a  donne  leur  taille  et  leurs  visages; 
Et  dans  ces  vieux  portraits,  qui  sont  leurs  monu 
ments, 
Leur  orgueil  se  conserve  avec  leur  ossements. 


STANZAS   IX-XII. 

These  identical  reflections,  couched  even  in  much 
the  same  language,  showing  that  there  is  no  new 
thought  under  the  sun,  occurred  to  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  the  immortal  author  of  the  essay  on  "Urn- 
Burial." 

"  What  song  the  sirens  sang,  or  what  name  Achilles 
assumed  when  he  hid  himself  among  the  women, 
though  puzzling  questions,  are  not  beyond  all  con 
jecture.  What  time  the  persons  of  these  ossuaries 
entered  the  famous  nations  of  the  dead,  and  slept 
with  princes  and  counsellors,  might  admit  a  wide 
solution.  But  who  were  the  proprietaries  of  these 
bones,  or  what  bodies  these  ashes  made  up,  were  a 
question  above  antiquarianism.  .  .  .  The  iniquity  of 
oblivion  scattereth  her  poppy,  and  deals  with  the 
memory  of  man  without  distinction  to  merit  of  per 
petuity  .  .  .  Time  hath  spared  the  epitaph  of  Adrian's 
horse,  confounded  that  of  himself.  .  .  .  Who  knows 
whether  the  best  of  men  be  known,  or  whether  there 
be  not  more  remarkable  persons  forgot  than  any  that 
be  remembered  in  the  known  account  of  time?" 

Compare  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  noble  brief  for  the 
forgotten  great  in  his  essay  on  "Forgotten  Benefac 
tors,"  especially  the  last  paragraph. 

"They  will  be  forgotten  before  long  as  we  too  shall 
be  forgotten  —  the  incalculable  majority  within  a  gen 
eration  or  two.  The  thought  may  be  painful,  but  the 
reasonable  conclusion  is,  I  think,  not  that  we  should 
fret  over  the  inevitable;  rather  that  we  should  purify 

67 


our  minds  from  this  as  from  other  illusions,  and  feel 
ashamed  of  the  selfish  desire  that  our  own  names 
should  be  preserved  when  we  know  that  so  many 
who  were  far  better  and  nobler  than  ourselves  will 
be  inevitably  forgotten,  and  were  better  and  nobler 
without  the  stimulus  of  any  such  paltry  desire.  .  .  . 
Though  the  memory  may  be  transitory,  the  good  done 
by  a  noble  life  and  character  may  last  far  beyond 
any  horizon  which  can  be  realized  by  our  imagina 
tions." 


STANZA  XIV. 

The  suggestion  of  the  Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurel- 
ius  is  positive  in  these  lines  of  the  original.  But  the 
Roman  emperor  makes  the  trio  to  be  composed  of 
Alexander,  Pompey,  and  Caesar: 

"Alexander,  Pompeius,  Caesar,  cum  tot  urbes  fun- 
ditus  evertissent  tot  hominum  myriades  in  prcelio 
cecidissent,  ipsi  quoque  tandem  vita  excesserunt."— 
III.  3.  [I  have  quoted  an  old  seventeenth  century 
Latin  translation  as  it  brings  out  the  identity  between 
the  two  more  strikingly.] 

The  lines  of  the  poem  are  worth  quoting  here,  for 
they  are  not  unimpressive: 

.     .     .     prole   Phillip! 

Non  eris  altior,  at  meritus  minor  hoc  quoque  scribi 
Ludere,  proelia,  cunctaque  mcenia  sponte  patere. 
Orbis  et  extima  vidit,  et  ultima,  vir  fore  natus, 
Gentibus,  urbibus  et  dominantibus  est  dominatus. 
Illeque  Cyrus?     Fama  relinquitur.    Caesar  obisti. 

Thou  shalt  not  be  higher  than  the  son  of  Philip, 
but  fhall  be  written  less  of  achievement  than  he.  He 
saw  the  farthest  and  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth,  born 
to  be  a  man,  and  ruled  over  nations  and  cities  and 
kings.  And  thou,  Cyrus?  Where  art  thou?  Fame 
has  abandoned  thee.  And  Caesar?  Thou,  too,  art 
dead. 

STANZA  XV. 

This  stanza  seems  to  be  a  reflection  from  the  Book 
of  Ecclesiasticus  xli.  3,  4,  by  Joshua  Ben-Sirach: 

68 


"  Be  not  affrighted  at  death  thy  lot;  remember  them 
that  have  been  before  thee  and  that  came  after.  This 
is  the  lot  of  all  flesh  from  the  Lord.  Wherefore  dost 
thou  push  from  thee  the  ordinance  of  the  Most  High? 
Be  it  a  thousand  years,  or  a  hundred,  or  ten,  there  is 
no  grievance  concerning  life  among  the  dead." 

Compare  Matthew  Arnold's  fine  lines: 
Yes,  as  the  son  of  Thetis  said, 

I  hear  thee  saying  now: 
"Greater  by  far  than  thee  are  dead, 

Strive  not.     Die  also  thou!" 


STANZA  XVII. 

Persius  has  put  this  thought  with  a  pithiness  which 
is  the  despair  of  the  translator,  and  of  course  minus 
the  biblical  allusion: 

Curn  lux  altera  venit 

Jam  eras  hesternum  consumpsimus;  ecce  aliud  eras 
Egerit  hos  annos,  et  semper  paulum  erit  ultra. 

Satires  V.  67. 

When  dawns  another  day 
Reflect  that  yesterday's  to-morrow  's  o'er, 
Thus  one  to-morrow,  one  to-morrow  more, 
Have  seen  long  years  before  them  fade  away 
And  still  appear  no  nearer  than  to-day. 

Gifford's  translation. 

Compare:  Les  annees  paraissent  longues  quand 
elles  sont  encore  loin  de  nous;  arrivees,  elles  dis- 
paraiseent;  elles  nous  echappent  en  un  instant. — 
Massillon,  Fragment  du  sermon  sur  la  mart,  la 
brievete  de  la  vie,  one  of  the  finest  monuments  of 
pulpit  eloquence  in  literature. 

STANZA   XVIII. 

Purpura  transiit  escaque  finiit,  ultio  restat. 

Rege  coro  sata  vermibus  est  data,  factaque  vermis. 

At  claros  homines  voluerunt  se  atque  potentes, 

Ut  fundamento  stabili  fortuna  maneret 

Et  palcidam  possent  opulenti  degere  vitam, 

Nequiquam  quoniam  ad  summum  succedere  honorem, 

69 


Certantes  iter  infestum  fecere  viae, 
Et  tamen  e  summo,  quasi  fulmen,  deicit  ictos 
Invidia  interdum  contemptim  in  Tartara  taetra; 
Ut  satius  multo  jam  sit  parere  quietum 
Quam  regere  imperio  res  velle  et  regna  tenere. 
Ergo  regibus  occisis  subversa  jacebit 
Pristina  majestas  soliorum  et  sceptra  superba, 
Et  capitis  summi  praeclarum  insigne  cruentum, 
Sub  pedibus  vulgi  magnum  lugebit  honorem. 
Quod  siquis  vera  vitam  ratione  gubernet, 
Divitiae  grandes  homini  sunt  vivere  parce 
JEquo  animo. 

Purple  passes  and  eating  comes  to  an  end,  but 
vengeance  endures.  The  flesh  that  sprang  from  kings 
is  given  to  worms  —  is  become  worms.  Men  have 
wished  to  be  famous  and  powerful  in  order  that  their 
fortunes  might  rest  on  a  firm  foundation,  and  that 
they  might  by  their  wealth  be  able  to  lead  a  tranquil 
life;  but  in  vain,  since  in  their  struggle  to  mount  up 
to  the  highest  dignities  they  rendered  their  path  one 
full  of  danger;  and  even  if  they  reach  it,  yet  envy, 
like  a  thunderbolt,  sometimes  strikes  and  dashes  men 
down  from  the  highest  point  with  ignominy  into 
noisome  Tartarus;  so  that  far  better  is  it  to  obey  in 
peace  and  quiet  than  to  wish  to  rule  with  supreme 
power  and  be  the  master  of  kingdoms.  For  kings 
shall  be  slain  and  the  ancient  majesty  of  thrones  and 
proud  sceptres  shall  be  overthrown  and  laid  in  the 
dust,  and  the  glorious  badge  of  the  sovereign  head 
bloodstained  beneath  the  feet  of  the  rabble,  shall 
mourn  for  its  high  prerogative.  Were  a  man  to  order 
his  life  by  the  rule  of  true  reason,  a  frugal  substance 
joined  to  a  contented  mind  is  for  him  great  riches. 


STANZA  XIX. 

With  mediaeval  fondness  for  redundancy  the  poet 
turns  this  thought  and  figure  over  and  over,  which  I 
have  omitted  to  do  in  the  stanza. 

Terrea  gloria  nunc  quasi  lilia,  eras  quasi  ventus. 

Quid  rogo  carnea  gloria?    Quid  rosa?    Foenum. 

Stat  rosa  pristina  nomine  nuda  tenemus. 

Flos  erat,  est  fimus  ille  potissimus  illeque  fortis; 

70 


Vix  ibi  sportula  plena,  vel  urnula  quo  prius  orbis 
Mane  stat  aggere,  nee  mora  vespere  fertur  humatus. 
Qui  modo  flos  fuit,  in  spatio  ruit  unius  horae; 
Mox  rapitur,  licet  ingenio  micet  atque  decore. 

[Notice  that  these  two  lines  are  "leonine  hexa 
meters,"  i.e.  hexameters  containing  rhymes  or  asson 
ances.  For  an  account  of  the  technique  of  this  form 
of  mediaeval  verse  see  Taylor,  The  Mediaeval  Mind, 
vol.  II,  pp.  199-200.] 

Laus  stat  imaginis,  umbraque  nominis,  immo  nee 

umbra. 

Proinde  licet  quot  vis  vivendo  condere  saecla; 
Mors  aeterna  tamen  nilo  minus,  ilia  manebit, 
Nee  minus  ille  diu  jam  non  erit,  ex  hodierno 
Lumine  qui  finem  vitae  fecit,  et  ille, 
Mensibus  atque  annis  qui  multis  occidit  ante. 
Jure  igitur  pereunt,  succumbunt  omnia  plagis 
Sic  igitur  magni  quoque  circum  moenia  mundi 
Expugnata  dabunt  labem  putrisque  ruinas. 
Ergo  rerum  inter  summam  minimamque  quid  escit? 

Earthly  glory,  like  lilies  now,  to-morrow  is  as  the 
wind.  What  is  the  glory  of  the  flesh?  I  ask.  Tis 
earth.  Its  roses?  Grass.  The  rose  of  yore  exists  in 
name  only ;  mere  names  we  wear.  He  was  a  flower  and 
now  is  slime,  that  powerful,  that  brave  one.  Scarcely 
would  he  fill  a  basket  or  a  little  urn  who  before  filled 
the  world.  In  the  morning  he  stands  upon  the  earth; 
in  the  evening  he  is  carried  out  for  burial.  That  which 
was  but  now  a  blooming  flower  falls  in  the  space  of 
an  hour,  and  is  shortly  snatched  away,  though  it  flash 
with  the  beauty  of  body  and  soul.  The  glory  of  a 
statue  remains  and  the  shadow  of  a  name.  Nay,  not 
even  a  shadow.  You  may  complete  as  many  genera 
tions  as  you  please  during  your  life:  none  the  less, 
however,  will  everlasting  death  await  you;  and  for 
no  less  a  long  time  will  he  be  no  more  in  being  who, 
beginning  with  to-day,  has  ended  his  life,  than  the 
man  who  died  many  months  and  many  years  ago. 
With  reason  all  things  perish.  So  shall  the  walls  of 
the  great  world  around  be  stormed  and  fall  to  decay 
and  crumbling  ruins.  Therefore  between  the  sum  of 
things  and  the  least  of  things  what  difference? 

71 


Ausonius,   the   best   of   post-classical   Latin   poets, 
sums  up  in  one  line  a  thought  which  the  mediaeval 
ecclesiastic  could  not  help  being  turgid  about: 
Una  dies  aperit,  conficit  una  dies 

Idyl  xv. 

Malherbe,  in  the  beautiful  lines  of  consolation 
which  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Du  Perrier,  who  had 
lost  a  little  daughter,  exquisitely  uses  this  figure  of 
the  rose  born  to  perish  so  soon. 

Mais  elle  etait  du  monde,  ou  les  plus  belles  choses 

Ont  le  pire  destin, 
Et,  rose,  elle  a  vecu  ce  que  vivent  les  roses 

L'espace  d'un  matin. 

STANZAS  XXII-III. 

The  thought  embodied  in  stanzas  xxii-xxiii  is  clear 
evidence  of  the  influence  of  Aristotelian  philosophy, 
as  it  was  metamorphosed  through  the  alembic  of  the 
medieval — especially  the  Arabic — mind.  The  schol 
astics  of  the  early  Middle  Ages  only  knew  Aristotle 
as  a  logician.  But  in  the  thirteenth  century  the 
Physics  and  the  Metaphysics  became  well  known, 
principally  through  Toledo  translations  from  Arabic 
into  Latin  of  the  abridgements  of  Avicenna  and  the 
commentaries  of  Averroes.  Europe  by  that  time  had 
a  complete  and  systematically  developed  philosophy. 
But  Averroistic  Aristotelianism  was  at  odds  with  the 
traditional  teachings  of  the  church.  It  taught  that 
God  knew  universals,  but  not  particulars;  whence  it 
was  argued  that  God  had  no  foreknowledge  and  was 
not  a  providence.  Accordingly,  if  there  was  no  provi 
dence  governing  the  world,  everything  must  happen 
by  hazard  or  destiny,  unless  some  other  supernal  in 
fluence  could  be  adduced.  Since  the  intelligent  mind 
rejects  the  idea  that  events  happen  from  mere  chance, 
and  Mohammedan  Aristotelianism  was  opposed  to 
the  eastern  doctrine  of  fatalism  (or  destiny),  the 
Arabs  concluded  that  everything  was  determined  by 
the  movement  of  the  stars  —  and  therefore  by  the 
intelligence  which  ordered  them.  In  such  a  teaching, 
obviously,  there  was  no  room  for  the  church's  chas 
tisement  of  the  damned  or  for  the  celestial  glory  of 

72 


the  saved.  The  argument  was  carried  further:  Since 
God  does  not  know  the  world  except  in  universals  and 
not  particulars,  how  could  He  have  created  it?  Mani 
festly  it  is  idle  to  think  that  the  world  was  created 
from  all  eternity  and  to  all  eternity.  And  if  not  the 
world,  how  can  the  creatures  of  earth  claim  immor 
tality?  Averroistic  Aristotelianism  made  a  profound 
impression.  Many  thinkers  accepted  it  with  all  its 
implied  consequences.  There  were  clerks  at  Paris 
who  denied  the  existence  of  God,  the  eternality  of  the 
universe  and  the  very  immortality  of  the  soul.  Such 
were  Boethius  of  Dacia,  Siger  of  Brabant,  and  Bernard 
of  Nivelles,  whose  teachings  we  will  find  again  farther 
on.  Compare  what  has  been  said  in  the  introduction. 

STANZA  XXVI. 

The  same  thought  is  to  be  found  in  John  of  Salis 
bury,  Polycrat.  VI.  12,  from  whom  it  most  certainly 
was  borrowed: 

"In  qua  laborans  mundus  jam  senuit,  in  qua  plus 
temporis  consumptum  est  quam  in  acquirendo  et 
regendo  orbis  consumpserit  Caesarea  domus." 

STANZA  XXVII. 

This  is  an  echo  of  the  piercing  inquiry  of  St.  Aug 
ustine  in  his  Confessions,  bk.  I,  ch.  6,  sec.  9:  Die 
mihi,  Deus,  utrum  jam  alicui  aetati  meae  mortuae 
successerit  infantia  mea:  an  ilia  est  quam  egi  intra 
viscere  matris  meae?  Nam  et  de  ilia  est  mihi  nonni- 
hil  indicatum  est,  et  praegnantes  ipse  vidi  feminas. 
Quid  ante  hanc  etiam,  dulcedo  mea,  Deus  meus? 
Fuine  alicubi?  aut  aliquis?  Nam  quis  mihi  dicatista 
non  habeo;  nee  pater,  nee  mater,  potuerunt,  nee 
aliorum  experimentum,  nee  memoria. 

STANZAS  XXVII-IX. 

The  figure  is  of  a  potter's  wheel  as  the  symbol  of 
fortune,  and  the  uncertain  fashioning  of  human  life. 
There  is  a  wonderful  description  of  a  potter  at  his 
task  in  Ecclesiasticus,  "whose  manner  of  working  is 
described  in  terms  which  make  us  regret  that  the 
Hebrew  original  of  this  passage  is  not  among  the 

73- 


recovered  fragments." —  Bevan,  Jerusalem  under  the 
high  priests,  p.  67.  Marcus  Aurelius  says:  "The 
wheel  of  the  world  has  ever  the  same  motion,  upward 
and  downward,  from  generation  to  generation." 
Omar  Khayyam's  use  of  the  metaphor  will  occur  to  all. 
Cf.  Romans  xi.  21. 

STANZA  XXX. 

E  mare  primum  homines  possent  oriri. 

"Anaximander,  who  lived  after  600  B.C.,  held  that 
man  was  descended  from  a  fish,  and  that  animals  only 
developed  legs  and  other  organs  after  the  waters 
which  originally  covered  the  earth  had  dried  up." 

Masson,  Lucretius,  epicurean  and  poet,  p.  172  note. 

The  scientific  inquiry  of  the  ancient  Greeks  far 
exceeded  what  is  usually  thought.  Epicurus  antici 
pated  the  "nerve-storm"  of  the  modern  physiologist. 
Masson,  loc.  cit.,  p.  347.  Atmospheric  pressure  and 
the  conservation  of  energy  were  also  divined,  if  not 
understood.  "The  Darwinian  doctrines  of  evolution, 
both  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the  survival  of 
the  fittest,  are  closely  foreshadowed  by  him  [Lucre 
tius,  De  rerum  natura}.  The  vexed  questions  of  our 
day  as  to  man's  origin  and  destiny  look  us  in  the 
face  again  in  his  poem.  .  .  .  Science  has  now 
proved  that  his  propositions  as  to  the  constitution  of 
matter,  in  each  case,  are  either  certainly  true,  or  else 
foreshadow  the  truth.  Indeed,  its  agreement  with  the 
results  of  modern  science  makes  us  wonder  how  the 
ancient  students  of  nature,  who  had  no  means  of  veri 
fying  the  observations  of  the  senses  through  experi 
ment,  could  have  succeeded  as  they  did.  Like  men 
walking  abroad  at  night  without  a  lantern,  they  could 
take  with  them  no  test  of  experimental  inquiry  by 
which  to  verify  their  hypothesis;  but  in  spite  of  all, 
some  faculty  enabled  them  to  keep  the  right  path. 
...  It  was  Gassendi  who  rescued  Epicurus'  atomic 
theory  from  the  forgotten  science  of  the  old  world 
and  revived  it  as  the  truest  basis  for  a  scientific  study 
of  nature.  Through  Gassendi  and  his  influence  both 
on  Newton  and  on  Boyle,  as  well  as  on  many  other 
minds  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries, 
Epicurus'  theory  has  taken  firm  root  in  modern 

74 


science,  and  has  developed,  by  stage  after  stage,  into 
that  atomic  theory  of  modern  chemistry  and,  in  our 
own  day  in  particular,  in  molecular  physics.  .  .  . 
What  would  Lucretius  have  said  to  the  spectrum 
analysis  by  which  the  chemist  can  literally  pass  be 
yond  the  'flaming  ramparts  of  the  world,'  and  bring 
us  tidings  from  the  distant  stars?" —  Masson,  loc.  cit., 
pp.  76,  81,  83  note.  Cf.  Tyrrell,  Latin  Poetry,  pp. 
85-88. 

For  the  detrimental  effect  of  the  church  upon  Greek 
scientific  thought  see  Hatch,  Influence  of  Greek  ideas 
and  usages  upon  the  Christian  church  [Hibbert  Lec 
tures],  1890,  p.  26  f. 

STANZAS   XXXI-II. 

The  thought  in  these  lines  was  probably  less  sug 
gested  by  Genesis  i.  2:  "And  the  spirit  of  God  moved 
upon  the  face  of  the  waters,"  than  by  Vergil's  Georgics 
IV.  221: 

Deum  namque  ire  per  omnes 

Terrasque  tractusque  maris,  coelumque  profundum. 

Through  every  land  God  journeys,  and  across 

The  ocean  wastes  and  through  the  depths  of  heaven. 

The  psychology  embodied  here,  though  written  six 
hundred  years  ago,  agrees  with  the  findings  of  modern 
psychological  research.  "Our  normal  waking  con 
sciousness,  rational  consciousness  as  we  call  it,  is  but 
one  special  type  of  consciousness,  whilst  all  about  it, 
parted  from  it  by  the  filmiest  of  screens,  there  lie 
potential  gorms  of  consciousness  entirely  different, 
...  No  account  of  the  universe  in  its  totality  can 
be  final  which  leaves  these  other  forms  of  conscious 
ness  quite  disregarded.  Yet  they  may  determine 
attitudes  though  they  cannot  furnish  formulas,  and 
open  a  region  though  they  fail  to  give  a  map."— James, 
The  varieties  of  religious  experience,  p.  388. 

And  Benson  ?n  his  Life  of  Fitzgerald,  p.  186,  writes : 
"The  most  precise  and  definite  religious  systems, 
after  all,  can  only  profess  to  touch  the  fringe  of  the 
deep  and  perennial  mysteries  of  life.  They  seem  to 
brighten  only  the  crescent  edge  of  the  shadowy  orb, 
and  leave  the  dark  tracts  unrevealed.  The  mystery 

75 


of  pain,  of  evil,  of  the  future  life,  of  the  brevity  of 
existence, —  these  can  not  be  solved.  The  utmost  that 
religion  can  do  is  to  illuminate  a  few  yards  of  the 
glimmering  pathway." 

STANZAS  XXXIIMV. 

Sed  nil  dulcius  est  bene  quam  munita  tenere 
Edita  doctrina  sapientium  templa  serena; 
Despicere  unde  queas  alios  passimque  videre 
Errare,  atque  viam  palantes  quaerere  vitae. 
Quapropter  quoniam  nil  nostro  in  corpore  gazae 
Proficiunt  neque  nobilitas  neque  gloria  regni, 
Quod  superest  animo  quoque  nil  prodesse  putandum. 
But  nothing  is  sweeter  than  to  occupy  the  well- 
defended  serene  heights  of  the  wise,  built  high  with 
learning,  from  which  you  may  be  able  to  look  down 
on  others,  and  see  them  wandering  and  straying  in  all 
directions  in  search  of  the  path  of  life.     Wherefore 
since  neither  treasures,  nor  nobility,  nor  the  glory  of 
a  kingdom  are  of  any  profit  to  the  body,  we  must  also 
deem  that  they  are  of  no  profit  to  the  soul. 

STANZA  XXXV. 

This  was  a  popular  legend  in  the  Middle  Ages  and 
is  alluded  to  by  Dante,  Purgatorio,  canto  X. 

STANZAS  XXXVI-VII. 

Again  I  have  abridged. 
Cur  etiam  nunc  est  mortalibus  horror, 
Qui  delubra  Dei  nova  toto  suscitat  orbi? 
Terrarum  et  festis  cogit  celebrare  diebus? 
Profanum.    Si  certain  finem  esse  viderent 
jZErumnarum  homines,  aliqua  ratione  valerent 
Episcoporum  minis  obsistere  vero. 
Nunc  ratio  nulla  est  restandi,  nulla  facultas, 
j^Eternas  quoniam  pcenas  in  morte  timendum. 
Sed  metus  in  vita  poenarum,  mens  conscia  factis, 
Nee  videt  interea  qui  terminus  esse  malorum 
Possit  nee  quae  sit  poenarum  denique  finis 
Atque  eadem  metuit  magis  haec  ne  in  morte 

gravescant. 
Inde  metus  maculat  pcenarum  praemia  vitae. 

76 


What  is  the  cause  of  that  shuddering  awe  implanted 
in  the  human  heart,  which  at  this  very  time  is  raising 
up  new  churches  to  God  over  the  whole  world,  and 
impels  men  to  throng  them  on  holy  days?  How  im 
moral!  If  men  saw  that  there  was  a  fixed  limit  to 
the  things  which  beset  them  they  would  be  able  in 
some  way  to  defy  the  threatenings  of  the  bishops. 
As  it  is,  there  is  no  way,  no  means  of  resisting,  since 
they  all  fear  everlasting  pains  after  death.  The  con 
science-stricken  mind  sees  not  what  end  there  can  be 
of  ills,  or  what  limit  at  last  there  may  be  to  punish 
ments,  and  fears  lest  these  very  evils  will  be  enhanced 
after  death. 


STANZA  XXXVIII. 

Mortalitatis 

Obsurduerunt  aures  completae  stridore  catena. 
[A  magnificent  line  borrowed  literally  from  Augus 
tine's  Confessions,  bk.  II,  ch.  2,  sec.  1.] 
Prsesulis  infula,  solvere  vincula,  vincla  tenere, 
Canone  respuit,  aereque  destruit,  astruit  acre. 
Gratia  vendita,  gratia  tradita  vi  feritatis; 
Gratia,  gratia,  quam  parit  ternaque  marca 
Quae  tamen  emptio,  sacra  redemptio  fertur  earum. 

Men  have  become  deaf  with  mortality's  loud-clank 
ing  chain.  The  chasubled  bishop  refuses  to  loose 
bonds  and  holds  bonds  tight,  according  to  the  canon 
law,  and  destroys  or  builds  up  for  gold.  Grace  is 
sold,  grace  is  bestowed  through  force  and  fraud. 
Grace,  grace,  which  is  got  for  a  paltry  sum  of  money. 
Yet  this  purchase  is  called  their  holy  redemption. 

"The  Stoics  and  the  Platonists  refused  to  admit 
that  self-completion  could  be  attained  through  the 
sacrifice  of  another,  a  view,  of  course,  implicit  in  the 
church's  doctrine  of  atonement.  Plato  waxed  indig 
nant  over  the  moral  effect  of  believing  that  the  unjust 
man  can,  while  retaining  all  the  gains  of  his  injustice, 
'square'  the  gods  and  circumvent  them  by  some  im 
posing  sort  of  ritual." —  Masson,  op.  cit.,  p.  26. 

Canon  Bigg,  The  church's  task  under  the  Roman 
Empire,  pref.,  p.  xiv,  has  said:  "They  [Stoics  and 
Platonists]  would  not  admit  that  the  undeserved,  vol- 

77 


untary  suffering  of  one  could  make  another  better. 
Plotinus  expressly  rejects  the  idea  as  immoral.  .  .  . 
It  seemed  to  him  inconceivable  that  it  should  be  the 
duty  of  a  good  man  to  give  up  any  portion  of  his 
spiritual  wealth  for  the  relief  of  the  poor,  to  make 
himself  worse  that  others  might  be  better." 

Mr.  Henry  Osborn  Taylor,  in  his  history  of  The 
Mediaeval  Mind,  vol.  II,  p.  296,  admirably  contrasts 
the  ancient  and  the  mediaeval  Christian  thought: 

"While  neither  Plato's  inquiry  for  truth  nor  Aris 
totle's  catholic  search  for  knowledge  was  isolated 
from  its  bearing  on  either  the  conduct  or  the  event 
of  life,  nevertheless  with  them  rational  inquiry  was 
a  final  motive,  representing  in  itself  that  which  was 
most  divinely  human,  and  so  the  best  for  man.  But 
with  the  philosophers  of  the  Middle  Ages  it  never 
was  quite  so.  For  the  need  of  salvation  had  worked 
in  men's  blood  for  generations.  And  salvation,  man's 
highest  good,  did  not  consist  in  humanly-attained 
knowledge  or  in  virtue  won  by  human  strength;  but 
was  divinely  mediated,  and  had  to  be  accepted  upon 
authority." 

STANZA  XXXIX. 

Perque  tot  aetates  hominum,  tot  tempora  et  annos, 

Cum  fortuna  lucem  quaerat,  vix  invenit  usquam. 

Nam  etiam  tenebris  immersum  Tartaron  atra 

In  lucem  de  nocte  vocant. 

Through  all  the  periods  of  man's  life,  all  genera 
tions,  all  years,  although  man  seeks  ever  for  light, 
scarce  ever  does  he  find  it.  For  there  are  those  who 
summon  Hell  itself  into  daylight  out  of  black  night 
and  the  gulf  of  shadows. 

STANZA  XL. 

Omnis  cum  in  tenebris  prassertim  vita  laboret; 

Quamvis  ridicula  haec  ludibraque  esse  videmus. 

Multi  similes  nautis  projectis  ab  undis. 

For  all  life  is  a  struggle  in  the  dark  to  some,  al 
though  we  see  that  these  things  are  food  for  laughter 
and  mere  mockeries.  Many  are  like  sailors  cast  up 
by  the  waves. 

78 


STANZA  XLV. 

Humana  ante  oculos  foede  nunc  jam  jacet 

In  terris  oppressa  gravi  sub  religione. 

For  human  life  lies  shamefully  grovelling  before 

our  eyes,  bowed  to  the  dust  beneath  the  heavy  weight 

of  superstition. 

STANZA  XLVI. 

The  poet,  like  Lucretius,  "feels  that  he  has  escaped 
from  superstition  as  from  some  gloomy  low-vaulted 
prison.  He  has  cut  his  way  through  the  phalanx  of 
his  priestly  jailers,  and  now  is  in  the  open." — Masson, 
op.  cit.,  p.  410. 

I  find  these  sentences  in  a  recent  article  by  Mr. 
Bertrand  Russell:  "It  is  escape  from  prison  that 
gives  to  some  moments  and  to  some  thoughts  a  quality 
of  infinity,  like  light  breaking  through  from  some 
greater  world  beyond.  Sudden  beauty  in  the  midst 
of  strife,  uncalculating  love,  or  the  night-wind  in  the 
trees,  seem  to  suggest  the  possibility  of  a  life  free 
from  the  conflicts  and  pettinesses  of  our  every-day 
world,  a  life  where  there  is  peace  which  no  misfortune 
can  disturb."—  Hibbert  Journal,  Oct.,  1912,  p.  48. 

One  might  use  the  very  words  of  Goethe  in  this 
connection : 

Away  from  the  darkened  rooms, 

Where  they  grudge  you  the  light  of  day; 
Where  men  low-bowing  in  craven  fear 

To  their  mis-shapen  idols  pray. 
Of  superstitious  worshipers 

Enough  in  the  years  of  old.    To-day 
Have  done  with  portent,  myth  and  ghost  — 
Leave  them  all  to  your  teachers  gray. 

[Gesetz  der  Triibe,  in  Gott  and  Wdt.~\ 

STANZA  XLVII. 

Mutat  enim  mundi  naturam  totius  aetas 
Ex  alioque  alius  status  excipere  omnia  debet, 
Nel  manet  ulla  sui  similis  res.    Omnia  migrant. 
Aurea  tempora  primaque  robora,  redde,  rogamus. 

79 


For  time  changes  the  face  of  the  whole  world,  and 
one  condition  of  things  after  another  necessarily  fol 
lows  in  all  things.  All  things  move  and  suffer  change. 
Give  back  those  golden  times,  we  ask,  and  that  pris 
tine  strength. 

STANZA  XLVIII. 

Compare  curribus,  aequor  arantibus  arida  velis, 
Ruraque  piscibus,  aera  navibus,  astra  camelis, 
Candida  de  nigris,  et  de  candentibus  atra, 
Quadrata  rotundis  mutata. 

Perhaps  these  lines  were  influenced  by  Lucretius, 
III.  784-86: 

Denique  in  aethere  non  arbor,  non  aequore  in  alto 
Nubes  esse  queunt  nee  pisces  vivere  in  arvis 
Nee  cruor  in  lignis  neque  saxis  inesse. 

STANZA  L. 

Sed  sua  pascua  non  nisi  menstrua  sunt  animarum, 
Solaque  funera  solaque  munera  primitiarum: 
Quid  mora?  pascitut,  est  quia  dicitur,  est  sibi  pastor. 
His  fodder  is  nothing  but  the  purification  of  souls 
and    the    celebration    of    first    fruits.      Enough  —  he 
feeds,   he   is,   because   so   called  —  is   to   himself,   a 
pastor. 

STANZA  LIV. 

An  allusion  to  the  historic  claim  of  St.  John  Lateran 
to  be  "omnium  urbis  et  orbis  ecclesiarum  mater  et 
caput " —  the  mother  and  head  of  the  churches  of  the 
city  [Rome]  and  of  the  world. 

STANZAS  LV-LVII. 

I  confess  to  have  dealt  very  freely  in  the  transla 
tion  with  the  original,  which  is  a  long  and  turgid 
invective : 

Haec  neque  nomine  digna,  nee  ordine  ecclesia  stat; 

Haec  vitis  perit,  haec  animas  gerit  irrequietas. 

Haec  bona  perdidit;  haec  genus  edidit  ore  dolosum, 

Pectore  mobile,  re  variabile,  menta  probosum. 

80 


Recta  perhorruit,  ordine  corruit,  eminet  astu. 
Sollicitudine,  fraude,  libidine,  crimine  fastu. 
Est  sine  nomine,  nam  sine  numine,  nam  sine  jure; 
Perdida  cladibus  est,  quia  fraudibus,  hae  sibi  curag. 
Pontificum  status  ante  fuit  ratus  integer  ante; 
Ille  statum  dabat,  ordine  nunc  labataille  labante. 
Gratia  corruit,  algor  in  horruit  amplior  Istro. 
Pontificum  status  excidio  datus,  exstat  avarus; 
Sternite,  sternite,  gutture  sospite,  pseudomagistri ! 

O  mala  secula,  venditur  infula  pontificalis; 
Infula  venditur,  haud  reprehenditur  emptio  talis. 
Venditur  annulus,  hinc  lucra  Romulus  auget  et  urget ; 
Est  modo  mortua  Roma  superflua;  quando  resurget? 
Roma  superfluit,  afflua  corruit  arida  plena; 
Roma  dat  omnibus  omnia  dantibus,  omnia  Romae; 
Transita  vocula  longaque  f  abula  persequitur  te. 
Roma  ruens  rota,  foeda,  satis  notat  cauteriat  te; 
Gurges  es  altior,  area  voracior,  alta  lacuna. 
Fas  mihi  scribere,  fas  mihi  dicere — 'Roma  peristi.' 
Fas  mihi  dicere,  fas  mihi  scribere — 'Roma  fuisti.' 
Fas  mihi  dicere,  fas  mihi  scribere — 'Roma  ruisti.' 

The  church  is  neither  worthy  of  a  name  nor  erect 
in  its  place.  It  is  perishing  from  vice  and  displays  a 
restless  spirit.  It  has  destroyed  its  blessings  and 
brought  forth  a  brood  crafty  of  speech,  fickle  of 
heart,  uncertain  in  affairs,  vicious  of  mind.  It 
shudders  at  the  right,  is  careless  of  order,  distin 
guished  by  guile,  soliciting,  deceit,  lust,  arrogance, 
and  guilt.  It  is  without  a  name  being  without  God 
and  without  justice.  It  is  destroyed  by  disasters  be 
cause  of  frauds  —  these  are  its  care.  Lo,  a  race 
vicious  of  speech,  impious  in  character!  The  place 
of  the  pope  once  was  a  tower  of  strength,  firm  and 
inviolable.  Now  it  totters  as  things  totter  around  it. 
Grace  is  dead  and  a  cold  broods  over  us  wider  than 
the  Danube.  The  high  place  of  the  popes  is  given 
over  to  destruction ;  they  have  become  misers.  Spread, 
spread  destruction  abroad,  while  your  necks  are  yet 
safe,  ye  false  teachers. 

0  evil  age,  the  chasuble  of  the  pontiff  is  sold,  the 
chasuble  is  sold  and  this  commerce  goes  unrebuked. 
The  ring  is  sold  and  hence  Romulus  increases  his 

81 


gains.  Overflowing  Rome  is  dead  now.  When  will 
she  rise  again?  Rome  overflowed  and  collapsed  in 
her  affluence,  withering  in  her  fulness.  Rome  gives 
all  things  to  all  who  give  all  things  to  Rome. 

A  voice  that  is  gone  and  a  distant  tale  pursue  thee. 
Rome,  thou  art  a  wobbling  wheel,  a  foul  enough 

mark  brands  thee, 
Thou  art  a  deep  whirlpool,  a  devouring  receptacle, 

a  deep  pool. 

Tis  right  for  me  to  write,  to  say/Thou  hast  perished.' 
'T  is  right  for  me  to  say,  to  write,  'Thou  wast.' 
'T  is  right  for  me  to  say,  to  write,  'Thou  art  fallen.' 


STANZA  LVIII. 

This  interesting  stanza,  enunciating  the  doctrine 
of  "eternal  recurrence"  so  familiar  to  readers  of 
Nietzsche,  admirably  serves  to  fix  the  time  of  the 
poet.  For  the  doctrine  of  eternal  recurrence  was  a 
striking  teaching  of  Siger  of  Brabant  and  his  school 
of  Averroistic  Aristotelians.  Siger  had  a  vision  of 
Time  truly  poetical.  He  believed  in  cyclic  evolu 
tion  —  that  is  to  say,  he  believed  that  the  ideas  of  an 
epoch,  the  laws,  civilization,  religions,  would  return 
again  to  the  point  of  departure.  But  as  the  series  of 
variations  which  formed  a  cycle  were  infinitely  long, 
men  were  unable  to  perceive  the  transitions  or  even 
to  retain  the  memory  of  the  changes.  Nevertheless, 
he  held  that  these  great  aeons  succeeded  one  another, 
the  long  series  of  evolutions  and  transitions  ultimate 
ly  getting  around  in  a  circle  to  the  beginning  again. 
See  Mandonnet,  Siger  de  Brabant,  p.  171. 


STANZA  LXII. 

.    .    .     antiquo  more  sacrorum 
Ecclesia  munificat  mortalis  muta  salute, 
Quae  bene  et  eximiae  quamvis  disposita  ferantur, 
Longe  sunt  tamen  a  vera  ratione  repulsa. 
Omnia  enim  stolidi  magis  admirantur  amantque, 
Inversis  quas  sub  verbis  latitantia  cernunt, 
Veraque  constituunt  quae  belle  tangere  possunt 
Auris  et  lepido  quae  sunt  fucata  sonore. 

82 


After  immemorial  ritual  the  Church,  with  inexpres 
sible  blessing,  sifts  down  her  grace  upon  mortals.  All 
which  things,  well  and  beautifully  as  they  are  mani 
fested,  yet  are  widely  removed  from  true  reason.  For 
fools  admire  and  like  all  the  more  things  which  they 
perceive  to  be  concealed  under  involved  language, 
and  think  things  to  be  true  which  are  glossed  over 
with  finely  sounding  phrases,  the  sonorous  rhythm  of 
which  pleases  the  ear.  Cf.  Lucretius  II.  606-28,  de 
scription  of  the  gorgeous  processional  and  mysteries 
of  the  worship  of  Magna  Mater. 

The  principle  of  the  aesthetic  function  in  worship, 
so  sharply  condemned  in  these  lines,  is  eloquently 
set  forth  by  James,  The  varieties  of  religious  experi 
ence,  pp.  458-60: 

"It  enriches  our  bare  piety  to  carry  these  exalted 
and  mysterious  verbal  additions  just  as  it  enriches  a 
church  to  have  an  organ  and  old  brasses,  marbles 
and  frescoes  and  stained  windows.  Epithets  lend  an 
atmosphere  and  overtones  to  our  devotion.  They  are 
like  a  hymn  of  praise  and  service  of  glory,  and  may 
sound  the  more  sublime  for  being  incomprehensible. 
.  .  .  Although  some  persons  aim  most  at  intellectual 
purity  and  simplification,  for  others  richness  is  the 
supreme  imaginative  requirement." 

Ruskin,  Stones  of  Venice  [St.  Mark's,  sec.  xx], 
enumerates  the  rich  "assemblage  of  those  sources  of 
influence  which  address  themselves  to  the  commonest 
instincts  of  the  human  mind :  .  .  .  darkness  and  mys 
tery,  confused  recesses  of  buildings,  artificial  light 
employed  in  small  quantity,  but  maintained  with  a 
constancy  which  seems  to  give  it  a  kind  of  sacredness, 
preciousness  of  material  easily  comprehended  by  the 
vulgar  eye,  close  air  loaded  with  a  sweet  and  peculiar 
odour  associated  only  with  religious  services,  solemn 
music  and  tangible  idols  or  images  having  popular 
legends  attached  to  them." 

STANZA  LXIII. 

I  have  borrowed  this  last  line  from  Matthew 
Arnold's  famous  sonnet,  for  it  quite  exactly  translates 
the  Latin: 

Sed  mage  pacata  posse  omnia  mente  tueri. 
83 


STANZA  LXV. 

Nec  vero  superstitione  tollenda  religio  tollitur, 
wrote  Cicero,  De  divinatione,  II.  72,  148. — "True 
religion  is  raised  by  the  destruction  of  superstition." 
The  materialism,  the  grossness,  the  bigotry,  the  igno 
rance —  in  a  word,  the  superstition  which  pervaded 
mediaeval  faith  found  one  of  its  strongest  manifesta 
tions  in  the  veneration  of  relics.  The  Iconoclastic 
Controversy  in  the  eighth  century  was  a  revolt  against 
the  abuses  of  the  practice.  The  more  intelligent  and 
the  deeper  spiritual  natures  of  the  Middle  Age  pro 
tested  in  vain  against  the  worship  of  relics.  Guibert 
de  Nogent,  born  1053,  in  the  diocese  of  Beauvais, 
wrote  a  famous  treatise,  De  pignoribus  sanctorum, 
which  he  dedicated  to  Eudes,  abbot  of  St.  Symphorian 
de  Beauvais.  See  Le  Franc,  Le  traite  des  reliques 
de  Guibert  de  Nogent,  in  Etudes  du  moyen-age  dediees 
a  Gabriel  Monod,  pp.  285-306.  Possibly  this  cry  of 
outraged  intelligence  of  more  than  a  century  before 
him  was  known  to  the  poet. 

STANZA  LXVI. 

Aurea  tempora  primaque  robora  praeterierunt ; 
Aurea  gens  fuit,  et  simul  haec  ruit,  ilia  ruerunt. 
Pristina  saecula  non  nisi  regula  nota  regabat; 
Saecula  pristina  non  nisi  pagina  viva  docebat. 
Qua?  modo  marmore  qualibet  arbore  templa 
struebant; 
Quae  sculptibus  atria  cultibus  expoliebant. 

The  golden  age  and  its  primeval  strength  have 
gone.  Golden  the  race  was,  and  when  it  fell  they 
fell.  The  primitive  age  governed  only  by  rules  that 
were  known.  The  primitive  age  taught  only  from  the 
living  page.  The  temples  now  built  of  marble  they 
built  of  any  tree;  the  halls  now  adorned  with  sculp 
ture  they  adorned  with  devotion. 

STANZA  LXVII. 

The  lines  of  the  original  here  seem  to  be  an  ampli 
fication  of  Horace's  line  in  the  Ars  Poetica  [line  3091 : 
Rem  tibi  Socraticae  poterunt  ostendere  chartae, 

84 


and  possibly  reminiscent  of  Cicero's  "errare  meher- 
cule  malo  cum  Platone  .  .  .  quam  cum  istis  vera 
sentire."—  Tusc.  Disp.,  I.  17,  39. 

STANZA  LXIX. 

The  religious  mysticism  here  reflected  was  a  favor 
ite  teaching  of  the  votaries  of  paganism  in  the  fourth 
century  A.D.  and  implicit  in  the  belief  of  Julian. 

"The  myths  are  all  the  expressions  of  God  and  of 
the  goodness  of  God;  but  they  follow  the  usual 
method  of  divine  revelation,  to  wit,  mystery,  and  alle 
gory.  The  myths  state  clearly  the  one  tremendous 
fact  that  the  Gods  are;  that  is  what  Julian  cared 
about  and  the  Christians  denied:  what  they  are  the 
myths  reveal  only  to  those  who  have  understanding." 

Sir  Gilbert  Murray,  Four  stages  of  Greek  religion, 
p.  158. 

The  most  famous  exponent  and  populizer  of  the 
doctrine  was  Euemerus,  a  Greek  mythographer  who 
lived  in  the  second  half  of  the  fourth  century  B.C. 
"In  a  kind  of  philosophical  romance,  Euemerus  de 
clared  that  he  had  sailed  to  some  No-Man's  Land, 
Panchaea,  where  he  found  the  verity  about  mythical 
times  engraved  on  pillars  of  bronze.  This  truth  he 
published  in  the  Sacra  Historia  ['lera'  Anagraphe], 
where  he  rationalised  the  fables,  averring  the  gods 
had  been  men,  and  that  the  myths  were  exaggerated 
and  distorted  records  of  facts."— Andrew  Lang,  Myth, 
ritual  and  religion,  I.  15. 

The  dying  paganism  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  cen 
turies  believed  that  "Greek  philosophy  was  the  relic 
of  a  primeval  relation." — Mark  Pattison,  Life  of 
Isaac  Casaubon,  p.  440.  Even  Dante  leaned  some 
what  towards  this  belief.  Roger  Bacon  in  the  thir 
teenth  century  believed  that  inspiration  was  relative, 
not  absolute,  and  so  far  qualified  the  current  teach 
ing  of  the  absolute  and  sole  divine  inspiration  of  the 
scriptures  by  holding  that  the  ancient  philosophers 
had  been  partially  inspired. 

"God  illuminated  their  minds,"  he  writes,  "to  de 
sire  and  perceive  the  truths  of  philosophy.  He  even 

85 


disclosed  the  truth  to  them.  The  study  of  wisdom 
may  always  increase  in  this  life  because  nothing  is 
perfect  in  human  discoveries.  Therefore  we  later 
men  ought  to  supplement  the  defects  of  the  ancients, 
since  we  have  entered  into  their  labors,  through 
which,  unless  we  are  asses,  we  may  be  incited  to  im 
prove  upon  them.  It  is  a  disgrace  to  keep  using 
merely  what  has  been  attained,  and  never  reach 
further  for  one's  self." — Taylor,  The  Mediaeval  Mind, 
II.  p.  492. 

"  The  subtle  transcendentalism  of  the  Greek  fathers 
was  foreign  to  Latin  Christianity;  the  characteristics 
of  Roman  life  as  reflected  in  Roman  worship  are 
plainly  visible  in  the  Latin  fathers.  From  Minucius 
Felix  onwards,  the  Christians  who  wrote  in  Latin,  so 
far  from  being  imaginative  and  dreamy,  are  one  and 
all  matter-of-fact;  historical,  abounding  in  illustra 
tion  of  life  and  conduct;  ethical  rather  than  specu 
lative;  legal  in  their  cast  of  thought  rather  than 
philosophical;  rhetorical  in  their  manner  of  expres 
sion  rather  than  fervent  or  poetical." —  W.  Warde 
Fowler,  Roman  religious  experience,  p.  458. 

For  the  influence  of  Roman  legal  and  institutional 
forms  on  the  disappearance  of  myth,  see  Harnack, 
History  of  Dogma,  bk.  V.  ch.  2. 

In  his  Birth  of  Tragedy  Nietzsche  holds  a  passion 
ate  brief  for  the  "master-morality"  of  ancient  pagan 
ism.  He  believes  that  Christianity,  by  reason  of  its 
authority,  its  constraint  of  the  spirit,  its  dogmatism, 
its  institutionalization,  has  exercised  a  deterrent  and 
inhibiting  influence  upon  the  progress  of  civilization. 

"  The  world  grew  older  and  the  dream  vanished. . . . 
For  this  is  the  manner  in  which  religions  are  wont  to 
die  out:  when,  under  the  stern,  intelligent  eyes  of 
an  orthodox  dogmatism,  the  mythical  presuppositions 
of  a  religion  are  systematised  as  a  completed  sum  of 
historical  events,  and  when  one  begins  apprehensively 
to  defend  the  credibility  of  the  myth  —  when  accord 
ingly,  the  feeling  of  myth  dies  out  and  its  place  is 
taken  by  the  claims  of  religion  to  historical  founda 
tions.  ...  A  people  —  and  for  the  rest  also  a  man  — 
is  worth  just  as  much  only  as  its  ability  to  impress 

86 


on  its  experiences  the  seal  of  eternity.  .  .  .  The  con 
trary  happens  when  a  people  begins  to  comprehend 
itself  historically  and  to  demolish  the  mythical  bul 
warks  around  it;  with  which  there  is  usually  con 
nected  a  marked  secularization,  a  breach  with  the 
unconscious  metaphysics  of  its  earlier  existence,  in 
all  ethical  consequences." — Birth  of  Tragedy,  pp. 
17,  84,  177. 

STANZAS  LXXIII-IV. 

Ipse  vocat  nostros  animos  ad  sidera  mundus. 
Nam  cum  suspicimus  magni  caelestia  mundi 
Templa,  super  stellisque  micantibus  aethera  fixum, — 
Luna  dies  et  nox,  et  noctis  signa  severa  — 
Et  venit  in  mentem  solis  lunaeque  viarum, 
Tune  aliis  oppressa  malis  in  pectora  stupor, 
Ille  quoque  expergefactum  caput  erigere  infit 
Quod  forte  Dei  nobis  immensa  potestas 
Sit,  vario  motu  quae  Candida  sidera  verset. 
The  very  world  calls  our  minds  upward  to  the  stars. 
When  we  look  up  at  the  celestial  temples  of  the  world 
on  high,  and  see  the  sun  and  moon  and  the  stars  — 
the  moon  and  the  light  of  day,  and  the  night  with  its 
solemn  fires — and  note  the  regularity  of  their  motion, 
we  can  hardly  avoid  the  thought  that  it  can  only  be 
some   infinite   and   divine   power   which   wheels   the 
bright  stars  in  their  varied  motion. 

The  sentiment  in  these  lines  is  a  good  example  of 
what  has  been  characterized  as  "the  emotion  which 
is  roused  by  sudden  revelations  of  the  infinitudes,  the 
silences  and  eternities  that  surround  us."  Aristotle, 
Lucretius,  Seneca,  and  Kant  use  almost  the  same 
language  in  contemplating  the  heavens.  Kant  found 
two  things  in  the  world  still  forever  wonderful  — 
"  The  starry  heavens  above  and  the  moral  law  within." 
Aristotle  relates  that  to  the  question:  What  made  life 
worth  living?  Anaxagoras  replied:  "Contemplating 
the  heavens  and  the  total  order  of  the  Cosmos." 


STANZA   LXXV. 

Haec  ego  divino  cupiam  ad  sidera  flatu 

Ferre,  nee  in  turba  nee  turbae  carmina  condam. 

Sed  in  coelo  noscenda  canam  mirantibus  astra. 

87 


I  would  bear  my  song  with  divine  measure  unto 
the  stars.  Not  in  the  crowd  nor  for  the  crowd  will  I 
build  my  poem.  I  shall  sing  secret  things  unto  the 
heavens;  the  stars  shall  hear  me  and  marvel. 


STANZA  LXXX. 


The  phrase  is  from  Ruskin,  which  I  have  adopted 
as  a  translation  of  the  line 
Vita  brevis  nulli  superest  quin  vita  valenda. 


STANZA  LXXXI. 

Walter  Pater,  Marius  the  Epicurean,  vol.  I,  p.  181, 
has  said:  "Religion  has  been  always  something  to 
be  done,  rather  than  something  to  be  thought  or  be 
lieved  or  loved." 

Both  Seneca  and  Martial  express  the  thought  em 
bodied  in  these  stanzas: 

Quam  bene  vivas  refert,  non  quamdiu. —  Seneca, 
Ep.,  xviii.  2. 

Non  est  vivere,  sed  valere,  vita.—  Martial,  xi.  32, 8. 

"Only  the  present,"  Marcus  Aurelius  says  over  and 
over,  "is  ours.  Neither  the  past  nor  the  future  are 
ours  to  dispose  of." 

All  of  them,  though,  are  echoing  a  saying  of  Epi 
curus:  "We  are  born  once;  twice  we  cannot  be 
born:  for  eternity  we  must  be  non-existent.  Yet  thou 
who  art  not  master  of  to-morrow,  puttest  off  the  right 
time.  The  life  of  all  of  us  is  ruined  by  procrastina 
tion,  and  it  is  on  this  account  that  each  of  us  dies 
before  he  is  ready." 

These  two  stanzas  are  clear  reflections  of  the  in 
fluence  of  the  Neo-Stoic  philosophy.  The  Stoics 
"found  in  the  progress  towards  virtue  a  sufficient 
end  of  existence" — a  philosophy  which  has  had  its 
modern  votaries.  Renan  said  to  his  wife  when  he 
was  dying: 

"Be  calm  and  resigned.  We  undergo  the  laws  of 
nature,  of  which  we  are  a  manifestation.  We  perish, 


we  disappear,  but  heaven  and  earth  remain,  and  the 
march  of  time  goes  forever  forward." 

So  also  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  has  written: 
"We  may  comfort  ourselves,  if  comfort  be  needed, 
by  the  reflection  that  though  the  memory  may  be 
transitory,  the  good  done  by  a  noble  life  and  char 
acter  may  last  far  beyond  any  horizon  which  can  be 
realized  by  our  imagination." — Forgotten  Benefactors 
[last  sentence]. 


STANZA  LXXXIII. 

In  the  original  these  lines  are  very  sonorous: 
Nee  pietas  ulla  est  velatum  saepe  videri 
Vortier  ad  lapidem,  atque  omnes  accedere  ad  aras, 
Necprocumbere  humiprostratum,et  pandere  palmas. 

Nor  does  religion  consist  in  showing  one's  self 
constantly,  with  veiled  face,  before  a  stone,  and  ap 
proaching  all  the  altars,  nor  in  prostrating  one's  self 
on  the  ground  and  stretching  out  open  hands  towards 
the  sanctuaries. 


STANZA  LXXXIV. 

Perque  pedes  proprios  nascentia  carmina  surgunt. 
Per  partes  ducenda  fides,  et  singula  rerum 
Sunt  gradibus  tradenda  suis,  ut  cum  omnia  certa 
Notitia  steterint,  proprios  revocentur  ad  usus. 
Sic  mihi  cunctanti  tantae  succedere  moli 
Materies  primum  rerum,  ratione  remota. 
Omnia  quando  paulatim  crescunt. 

By  measured  steps  a  poem  rises  and  comes  to  live. 
I  too  must  learn  line  by  line,  step  by  step,  till  all 
things  stand  sure  in  knowledge.  Even  so  I,  timidly 
endeavoring  a  great  labor,  must  first  collect  the  ma 
terial  of  the  building,  letting  wait  reason's  larger 
plan.  For  all  things  grow  gradually. 

This  is  thoroughly  Aurelian:  "Word  upon  word, 
every  one  by  itself,  must  the  things  that  are  spoken 

89 


be  conceived,  and  understood.  And  so  the  things 
which  are  done,  purpose  after  purpose,  every  one  by 
itself  likewise." — Casaubon's  translation  [VII.  4]. 


STANZA  LXXXVI. 

Lovers  of  Tennyson  will  at  once  recognize  the 
source  of  the  first  line  of  this  stanza.  It  quite  exactly 
translates  the  Latin  verse  of  the  mediaeval  poet: 

Expetam  et  omnia  comperiam,  nil  cedere  certus. 

STANZA  LXXXVIII. 

Mors  via  maxima,  mors  patet  ultima  linea  rerum; 
Mors  acies  rerum,  quisquis  mortem  effugit 
Contempserit ;  timidum  quemque  consequitur. 
Cf.  Quintus  Curtius,  De  rebus  gestis  Alexandri, 
IV.  14,  25. 


STANZA  LXXXIX. 

Carlyle,  Sartor  Resartus,  bk.  II,  ch.  9,  hits  off  this 
same  thought: 

"Was  it  not  to  preach  forth  this  same  Higher  that 
Sages  and  Martyrs,  the  Poet  and  the  Priest,  in  all 
times,  have  spoken  and  suffered;  bearing  testimony 
through  life  and  through  death,  of  the  God-like  that 
is  in  man,  and  how,  in  the  God-like  only  has  he 
strength  and  freedom." 

STANZA  XC. 

Compare  Amos  iii.  8:  "The  lion  hath  roared,  who 
will  not  fear?  The  Lord  God  hath  spoken,  who  can 
but  prophesy";  and  Hosea  xi.  10:  "They  shall  walk 
after  the  Lord,  who  shall  roar  like  a  lion." 

The  lion  is  the  symbol  of  strength  and  truth  in 
both  pagan  and  Christian  thought.  Who  does  not 
remember  the  lion  in  Nietzsche:  Thus  spake  Zara- 
thustra  [pt.  I.  1]:  "The  spirit  of  the  lion  saith  'I 
will'." 


90 


STANZA  XCII. 

Like  Euripides  in  the  great  transition  epoch  of 
Greek  thought,  the  poet  is  resolved  to  grope  his  way 
to  God  along  the  line  of  reason. 

Fato  et  tempore  confectus,  fessusque  labore, 
At  tantum,  pol,  quantum  animo  contendere  possum ; 
Nam  neque  decipitur  ratio,  nee  decipit  umquam. 
Etenim  alid  ex  alio  clarescet  nee  mini  caeca 
Nox  iter  eripiet  quin  ultima  naturae 
Pervideam:  ita  res  accendent  lumina  rebus. 

Though  worn  by  time  and  fate,  and  weary  through 
toil,  yet  will  I  keep  on  searching  and  finding  all 
things  to  the  limit  of  my  power.  For  reason  never 
deceives  nor  is  deceived.  For  one  thing  after  another 
will  grow  clear,  and  dark  night  will  not  rob  me  of 
the  road  or  keep  me  from  examining  the  ultimate 
things  of  life.  So  old  things  will  light  the  torch  for 
new  things. 

Compare  this  stanza  with  II.  884  f.  of  the  Trojan 
Women: 

Base  of  the  world,  and  o'er  the  world  enthroned, 
Whoe'er  thou  art,  Unknown  and  hard  of  surmise, 
Cause — Chain  of  Things  or  Man's  own  Reason — God 
I  give  thee  worship,  who  by  noiseless  paths 
Of  justice  leadest  all  that  breathes  and  dies. 

Murray's  translation. 

So,  in  the  Agamemnon,  ^Eschylus  says: 

"Zeus,  who  made  for  man  the  road  to  thought." 
This  tribute  to  the  power  of  reason  is  so  purely  Greek 
in  character  that  it  must  have  been  derived  by  the 
poet  from  Lucretius. 

Hugo  of  St.  Victor  was  born  at  Hartingam  in 
Saxony  in  1096,  and  died  at  the  monastery  of  St. 
Victor,  near  Paris,  in  1141.  He  was  one  of  the  great 
est  mystics  of  the  Middle  Ages.  See  Haureau,  Hugues 
de  St.  Victor,  Paris,  1859;  DeWulf,  History  of  Phil 
osophy,  sec.  204. 


91 


STANZA  XCHI. 

This  figure,  comparing  spiritual  pilgrimage  to 
climbing  a  high  mountain,  is  to  be  found  in  Augus 
tine's  Confessions,  bk.  VII  [last  paragraph] : 

Et  aliud  est  de  silvestri  cacumine  videre  patriam 
pacis  et  iter  ad  earn  noninvenire  ...  at  aliud  tenere 
viam  illuc  ducentem. 

For  it  is  one  thing  from  the  mountain's  shaggy 
summit  to  see  the  land  of  peace  and  to  find  no  way 
thither  .  .  .  and  another  to  keep  on  the  way  that 
that  leads  thither. 

In  both  instances,  perhaps,  the  metaphor  is  refer 
able  to  Deuteronomy  xxxii.  49-50. 


92 


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